It has seemed weird and sacrilegious, but we've mostly been excited about the fact that the Maserati Levante was to be built on a Jeep platform. Yes, It's not unlike Brioni making a suit using a Levi's fabric, but at least we knew the Levante would be off-road capable.
Now Maserati CEO Harald Wester has said that the Levante will not be based on a Jeep platform. Rather, it can be expected that the Levante will be built on the new AWD Quattroporte's platform. There go our dreams of an off-roadable Maserati.
There's a reason for why we care about the Levante being off-road-ready, too. Maserati has been around for about 100 years, and the one constant was that there has always been a motorsport aspect to the road cars. Even the Quattroporte has seen motorsport duty. We're not going to accept that the Levante is a real Maser unless it wins some races, and without a proper SUV platform, there's no way in hell this thing will be able to handle the Dakar.
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[via Motor Trend]
