The Maserati Levante Is Ditching the Jeep Platform

It has seemed weird and sacrilegious, but we've mostly been excited about the fact that the Maserati Levante was to be built on a Jeep platform. Yes, It's not unlike Brioni making a suit using a Levi's fabric, but at least we knew the Levante would be off-road capable.

Now Maserati CEO Harald Wester has said that the Levante will not be based on a Jeep platform. Rather, it can be expected that the Levante will be built on the new AWD Quattroporte's platform. There go our dreams of an off-roadable Maserati.

There's a reason for why we care about the Levante being off-road-ready, too. Maserati has been around for about 100 years, and the one constant was that there has always been a motorsport aspect to the road cars. Even the Quattroporte has seen motorsport duty. We're not going to accept that the Levante is a real Maser unless it wins some races, and without a proper SUV platform, there's no way in hell this thing will be able to handle the Dakar.

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[via Motor Trend]