Ferrari to cut off Maserati engine supply

The surge towards electrification can’t come soon enough for Italian luxury brand Maserati after news that Ferrari plans to cut off its engine supply.

The news of Ferrari’s move was slipped quietly in to its first-quarter earnings call with investors, with CEO Louis Camilleri insisting it would stop supplying its former junior company from 2021 at the latest.

All current petrol-engined Maseratis, from the Ghibli and Quattroporte to the Levante, are powered by engines built just 20km away from their Modena headquarters at Ferrari’s Maranello factory – in an engine plant built with Maserati money.

They include a biturbo 3.0-litre V6, a biturbo 3.8-litre V8 and a naturally aspirated 4.7-litre V8.

The three Maserati mainstays are all built at a factory outside Turin, rather than the aging home plant in downtown Modena (which will cease production of the GranTurismo and GranCabrio this year).

The V6 biturbo motors are also used to power the Alfa Romeo Giulia Q and Stelvio Q.

"Eventually, we will no longer supply engines to Maserati, which actually from our perspective is actually a good thing, both from a margin perspective, but also the fact that we can transfer a lot of the labor that's been focused on the engines to the car side of the business," Camilleri said.

Ferrari has built Maserati’s petrol-powered engines since the end of Maserati’s in-house biturbo V6 in 2002, which came, oddly enough, just after Fiat palmed the troubled Maserati off to Ferrari’s management.

It isn’t switching production to anybody else, either, so the implication is that it will need all of its engine-production capacity for itself and its Purosangue.

While Maserati is known to be electrifying to take on Europe’s tough new 2020 emissions laws, there is no obvious powertrain option available to it in the current crop of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles units.

Maserati has been contacted for comment, but has yet to respond.