An Entry-Level Maserati to Woo Drivers Bored With BMW

Maserati has long supplied exotic—and expensive—rides to the rich and super-rich. Now the 99-year-old sports car maker is shifting its focus to the merely wealthy. In September the Fiat subsidiary plans to introduce the Ghibli, a midsize sedan starting at $65,600 that it hopes will present a direct challenge to German models such as the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and Audi A6. Maserati is betting it can offer something the Germans can’t: Italian sex appeal backed by the power and cachet of engines from sister brand Ferrari. “We have to steal buyers from the Germans,” says Benedetto Orvietani, a product development manager at Maserati. “We are going after their most demanding customers, the ones that are bored with their Audi A6 and want to stand out.”

The Ghibli—the name is taken from a 1960s-era model and stems from an Arabic word for a hot wind from the Sahara—is a critical part of Maserati’s plan to boost sales eightfold, to 50,000 vehicles, by 2015. While that wouldn’t be much for the German carmakers, which each sell more than 1 million cars a year, it marks a threat because Maserati is targeting buyers of the most expensive high-horsepower vehicles, which typically yield the greatest profits. The Germans “are limited in how well they can satisfy customers’ desire to be different,” says brand chief Harald Wester, a German engineer who worked at Volkswagen and Audi before taking charge of development at Fiat in 2004.