Monday 6th January 2003

Maserati Kubang

Maserati target America with SUV thing designed by Guigiaro

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[AndySa]

As much as I hate the on-road SUV culture, I must admit that this is the best looking car of it's type. It makes the Porsche/BMW efforts seem rather bland.

[MDG]

Not convinced at all I'm afraid. It suffers from the same problem as the Cayenne: lots of sports car styling cues slapped onto a big offroader body. Doesn't it strike you as ironic that they're trying to reintroduce a sportscar brand by launching a semi-offroader?

Waste of time IMHO.

Edit: O yes, forget to mention the extremely silly name. What's a Kubang for heaven's sake?

Edit again: so a Kubang is a wind... Still sounds silly!

MDG.

>> Edited by MDG on Monday 6th January 09:35

>> Edited by MDG on Monday 6th January 09:36

[philh]

i hope kubang isn't a reflection on what it will do, go ku bang

[v8thunder]

Looks more like some kind of Quattroporte- based estate than an SUV.

[rodsmith]

SUV owners should be put to sword!

[danger mouse]

Did a Pug 206 swallow a footpump, or has that talented indian landed an elephant on another inocent motorcar?

[456mgt]

Don't like the name but I do like the look. Not a big fan of SUVs, but if we have to have one, this is better than anything else I've seen. Maserati need to do something in the US to raise their profile (and make some money) and it could well be this car that does it.

[MikeAR303]

I'm literally sick to my stomach about this. If anyone from Lotus is reading this... please do not follow in the footsteps of Maserati and Porsche.

[danger mouse]

Here Here, I second that.

We Brits (hopfully) know better!

[joust]

Looks a bit Nissan Micra bubble to me... I'll think I'll stick with my X5.

J

[JonGwynne]

danger mouse said: Here Here, I second that.

We Brits (hopfully) know better!

I dunno, some brain-donor at Jaguar was convinced that diesels and estates were the future of the marque and we were supposed to see X and even S-types done up as oil-burners and suburban family-wagons while the lovely F-type roadster was indefintely shelved.

Probably some escaped mental-patient/marketing weasel from the Ford side of the company.

I'm told that wiser heads have prevailed in the meantime and that the F-type is back on while those other "ideas" (read: abominations) have been shelved.

[JonGwynne]

456mgt said: Don't like the name but I do like the look. Not a big fan of SUVs, but if we have to have one, this is better than anything else I've seen. Maserati need to do something in the US to raise their profile (and make some money) and it could well be this car that does it.

Yeah, I kept thinking the same thing looking at it. Ital Design has finally extracted beauty from the famously unlovely SUV.

Although, to look at it, it isn't *really* an SUV, is it? It looks just enough like one to get the average SUV-buying mouth-breather to think it might fit the category.

I think they'll find the problem is that the SUV is very much a "me-too!" kind of fad in the US and among US wanna-be's. The people who are going to follow the fickle whims of fashion like this aren't going to then suddenly veer off the track and buy something exotic like a Maserati. They'll buy a Toyota Landcruiser or Ford Explorer or maybe a Land Rover. A few wealthy yuppies may go for a Porsche Cayenne but how many are likely to "go Italian"? I think most Americans think of Maserati (when they do at all, which is rarely) as either a more obscure cousin of Ferrari or the perpetrators of the heinously unreliable Biturbo of the 1980s.