Romain, a former Maserati sales veteran who worked the frontlines between Annecy and Geneva from 2015 to 2026, speaking in a raw tell-all interview with Yvan Jacob of Outrun Motor Company, chronicled the brand’s ride from heady growth right into a punishing sales slump, exposing the absurdities of corporate luxury strategy along the way.
According to Romain, Maserati’s primary sin was a frantic, desperate obsession with chasing sales volume. Headquarters blindly pumped inventory into dealership lots, forcing local showrooms into a brutal game of survival to unlock liquidity.
The result was an embarrassing, self-inflicted discount war. A shiny new Maserati carrying a proud €180,000 sticker price would rapidly get slashed down to €150,000, €140,000, or a desperate €130,000 just to clear space. For a brand pretending to sit at the high table of exclusivity, this price slashing destroyed perceived prestige and thoroughly insulted the wealthy early adopters who actually paid full price.
Making matters worse, Maserati operated on a hilarious delusion: corporate considered a car “sold” the moment it appeared invoiced to the dealer. To management, the dealership was the actual customer, and moving the vehicle off the lot into a real human’s garage was purely the salesperson’s headache.
Add to that the cardinal sin of luxury design, plastering cheap, mass-market parts from generalist group models inside a cabin costing six figures, and you get discerning buyers turning on their heels.
Yet, despite the self-sabotage, the Trident still possesses an almost magical pull when the stars align. Romain recalled how a single prominent appearance of the Quattroporte GTS in the hit movie The Intouchables instantly triggered a feeding frenzy, wiping out France’s entire nationwide stock in a mere two weeks.
Beneath the discount wars and parts-bin blunders, the raw emotional desire for Maserati remains unmatched, provided the factory actually gives people something worth swooning over.
