Nowadays, high-end luxury cars and manual transmissions are about as compatible as oil and water. At Maserati, the executive suite is banking on three pedals to lure wealthy enthusiasts into its ultra-niche universe. Maserati’s marketing boss, Cristiano Fiorio, recently dropped a fascinating bombshell: the stick shift isn’t dead, it is just hiding behind a massive, ultra-exclusive paywall called Bottega Fuoriserie.
Launched last year in tandem with sister brand Alfa Romeo, BottegaFuoriserie is a modern bespoke coachbuilding program designed to cater to the wildest automotive fantasies. According to the official corporate playbook, its mission revolves around crafting timeless custom cars, historically accurate restorations, and cutting-edge material research. These are obscenely expensive toys for people with multi-million-dollar bank accounts. We are talking about bespoke Stradale creations and one-off restomods.
Because BottegaFuoriserie is Fiorio’s brain-child, he knows exactly what keeps his high-net-worth clients ticking. Surprise, surprise: they still want massive internal combustion engines running on premium gasoline. The bigger the displacement, the better. And as it turns out, billionaires who obsess over traditional, multi-cylinder powerplants also happen to suffer from an incurable nostalgia for a mechanical clutch pedal.
While this is fantastic news for the elite purist crowd, it is a bit of a cold shower for the rest of us. Fiorio gave absolutely no indication that the manual transmission will ever trickle down to Maserati’s standard showroom lineup. In fact, the Modenese brand hasn’t offered a stick-shift car to ordinary mortals in nearly twenty years, and back then, that specific model had to be paired with a roaring Ferrari-sourced V8 just to make sense.
Meanwhile, Alfa Romeo was actively selling the manual Giulia Quadrifoglio in overseas markets until quite recently, proving that the hardware exists. If Maserati can indulge the ultra-wealthy with three pedals, maybe you could step up and throw the core car enthusiasts a bone?
