Maserati’s glorious V8 engine is not technically dead. It is merely taking a corporate smoke break. At least, that is the delightfully cryptic message floating around Modena after Santo Ficili, the brand’s COO, was grilled during a recent press conference. When pressed about whether the legendary eight-cylinder symphony would ever return, Ficili dropped a piece of PR poetry: “There are no limits”. In the hyper-analyzed world of automotive journalism, a beautiful non-denial like that is practically treated as a sacred text.
Maserati is currently head-over-heels for its home-grown Nettuno twin-turbo V6, the mechanical anchor around which the entire current lineup revolves. And honestly, it is hard to argue with the data. This block pulled off an impressive corporate identity crisis, smoothly delivering a 300 HP in the entry-level Grecale SUV while screaming all the way up to a terrifying 730 HP in the track-only MCXtrema. The Nettuno clearly has plenty of structural headroom left, proving that Maserati’s six-cylinder golden goose is nowhere near its retirement party.
Under the massive Stellantis umbrella, the only off-the-shelf V8 options belong to the HEMI family. While a raw, pushrod American muscle car engine is perfect for doing donuts in a supermarket parking lot, stuffing a heavy Detroit heart into a sophisticated Italian grand tourer is an aesthetic mismatch that no designer could ever justify.
On the flip side, developing a brand-new internal combustion V8 from scratch requires the kind of astronomical capital that a low-volume, niche manufacturer simply cannot shoulder without weeping into their accounting ledgers.
Yet, the historical precedent is too glorious to ignore. During the high-flying 2000s and 2010s, the Quattroporte and GranTurismo sang to the tune of a magnificent Ferrari-derived V8, masterfully tuned to deliver that distinct Maserati growl. That unforgettable acoustic and mechanical identity left an indelible mark on the automotive world, fueling a persistent nostalgia that corporate press releases cannot easily extinguish.
Santo Ficili knows this, which is precisely why he left the door unlocked. Whether this V8 comeback remains a brilliantly packaged marketing dream or becomes a showroom reality is anyone’s guess. For now, the Nettuno V6 roars just loud enough to drown out our impatience.
