Maserati CEO Davide Grasso on the Company’s Push for Quality—and Electrification
3 min
Maserati is sitting out the auto shows—at least most of them.
“The world is changing, and we made the decision about auto shows in 2019 or 2020, when the pandemic happened, and we’ve stuck with it,” CEO Davide Grasso told Penta in an interview. “No more auto shows, except Shanghai. We make an exception for Shanghai.” It helps that China now has the largest auto market in the world.
Indeed, at Shanghai on April 19, Maserati unveiled its second electric Folgore model (after the redesigned GranTurismo, which was also being introduced to China). The new entrant is the SUV Grecale Folgore. “It’s a new beginning for the brand,” Grasso said in Shanghai. “We’re celebrating Folgore, the electrification plan that has become a reality and is ready to pave the way in this revolutionary era. I’m very excited to be here in Shanghai, which is not only an international exhibition but also a global platform for innovation. It’s the ideal place to unveil the first electric models in the history of Maserati.”
When it released the Grecale Folgore, Maserati said it would be built in Italy with a 105-kilowatt-hour battery and “all the true Trident performance elements.” These include more than 500 horsepower with 590 pound-feet of torque. The top speed will be over 124 miles per hour. There are now three versions of the Grecale: the GT, with a four-cylinder mild-hybrid powertrain and 300 horsepower; the Modena, with a three-litre, 530-horsepower V-6 related to the Nettuno engine in the MC20; and the Folgore, 100% electric with 400-volt technology.
Grasso saysMaserati is thriving as part of the 14-brand Stellantis, headed by hard-charging CEO Carlos Tavares—a stickler for quality.
“The quality issue is important,” Grasso says. “Carlos is a great believer in the potential of the Maserati brand. To succeed as a luxury brand, you have to focus on quality, not quantity. So we are putting a lot of effort into upgrading our processes. We took the time to ensure that the Grecale would be pristine..”
Maserati had a 24,269-vehicle global year in 2022. That was not the loftier goal set by the company in 2018, but it was quite a successful year nonetheless
The company’s full-year profits were US$221 million, nearly double of 2021“Maserati is back, doing the right things in the right way,” said Tavares in an earnings call. Unlike Tavares, Grasso did not come up through the auto industry ranks. Before Maserati, he was CEO and president at Converse, and prior to that was chief marketing officer at Nike. But shoes or cars, the core principles are basically the same, Grasso says.
“The pillars are brand marketing, customer service, residual value, and human resources. Without all these things and the right mindset, managing a luxury brand won’t work. You can have the best marketing team, but if you’re bad at servicing—if we don’t give you a loaner, if we treat you badly—it all falls apart,” he says.
Grasso also says he was happy with the electric versions of the GT and Grecale.
“The electric GT is heavier, but the cars are still very responsive, with 2.7 seconds to 60 mph and 760 horsepower on tap,” he says. “We are in full execution of our electrification strategy now, and we’re excited by the level of performance. We will have an electric Quattroporte in early 2025 on a brand-new platform, redesigned from the inside-out. Then the new Levante. We will be only electric by 2030. The plans are coming together, so it might even be earlier than that.”
Although SUVs dominate today, Grasso sticks up for the sedans and two-seat sports cars (the MC20) in Maserati’s lineup.
“It’s never all SUVs,” he says. “There’s the comfort of a sedan versus the off-road capability of an SUV. Maserati was born on the track, so we combine speed and luxury. Many of our owners have multi-car garages, so they can own different types of vehicles.”
Maserati has been aggressive in establishing its U.S. dealer network, and now has more than 100 outlets. “We are right-sizing it, and there are some locations where we don’t need to be,” he says. “We have to be where the customers are. And going forward, the stand-alone dealership is the model. We have to make sure that the dealerships are aligned with our core values, treating the customers with courtesy and streamlining the buying procedure. But we don’t want to woo people with bells and whistles if it’s not matched with excellence in the rest of the operation.”
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In a series of social-media posts, the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham threw stones at the image of a ‘perfect family’.
3 min
David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.
After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.
“Children are allowed to make mistakes,” Beckham, 50, said. “That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids, but you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”
Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.
He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote on Instagram. “Brand Beckham comes first.”
That brand has been burnished over decades of professional triumphs, tabloid scandals and slick dealmaking.
Recently, both David and Victoria Beckham put their legacies on-screen in docuseries that cast them as hardworking entrepreneurs and devoted parents. Their image appeared stronger than ever. Now their firstborn child is throwing stones.
Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.
In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.
Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.
“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.
Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.
In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)
“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.
Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
Where Victoria and David seemed to see press scrutiny as part of the job, Brooklyn and Nicola are operating in a manner more typical of their own generation. Brooklyn’s posts call to mind the “no contact” boundaries some children have enforced with their parents in recent years to much pop-psych chatter.
Andrew Friedman, managing director of crisis communications at Orchestra, said he’d advised many clients through family drama. “Going public,” he said, should be a “last resort.”
He’s also warned clients that using social media to air grievances opens a can of worms. “Nuance is not welcome in social-media feeding frenzies,” Friedman said. “Sensational and unusual details will overshadow the central issue.”
Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.
He’s worked as a model, photographer, cooking-show host and most recently founded a hot-sauce brand. Brooklyn and Nicola went public with their relationship in 2020 and married in a lavish 2022 ceremony at her family estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.
Brooklyn on Monday recounted further grievances related to a mother-son dance and the seating chart. In the months and years that followed, celebrity journalists and fans closely tracked both generations of the family, looking for cracks in the relationship.
But official dispatches from Beckham World suggested that things were just fine. In a scene from the final episode of David’s Netflix series, the Beckham family, including Brooklyn and Nicola, joke around on a visit to their country home. It’s a picture of familial bliss.
“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal upbringing as possible. But you’ve got a dad that was England captain and a mom that was Posh Spice,” David says in voice-over.
“And they could be little s—s. And they’re not. And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children, and I’m so in awe of my children, the way they’ve turned out.”
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