THE MAKING OF A DRIVING LEGEND
Ever wondered what it takes to create a car like the Maserati? Meet the German designer taking on an Italian icon.
3 min
Klaus Busse would like you to close your eyes and imagine yourself behind the wheel of a Maserati. Picture the GranTurismo, which launched in Australia in 2024. Where do you see yourself? Chances are, Busse suggests, it’s not during the school pick-up or commuting to the office.
“You’re probably on a wonderful road in Tuscany, or Highway 1, or you’re going to a red carpet event,” says Busse, who holds the enviable title of Head of Design at Maserati, the iconic Italian car manufacturer. “Basically, it’s about emotion.”
At the luxury end of the market, the GranTurismo Coupe—priced between $375,000 and $450,000—is designed to transform the driving experience into something extraordinary. For Busse and his team, these “sculptures on wheels” are not just status symbols or exhilarating machines but expressions of pure joy. Their mission is to encapsulate that feeling and translate it into their cars.
“I really feel the responsibility to create emotion,” he says. “We have a wonderful word in Italy: allegria, which is best translated as ‘joyful.’ Our job as a brand is to lift you into this area of joy, perfectly positioned just short of ecstasy. It’s that tingling sensation you feel in your body when you drive the car.”
Even as 60 percent of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, Maserati’s design ethos captures the essence of “everyday exceptional.” Whether navigating city streets or open roads, a Maserati turns heads without being ostentatious or aggressive. “I’ve driven these cars all over the world, and no matter where I go, people smile at me and give a thumbs-up,” says Busse.
Since joining Maserati in 2015, Busse has reimagined and redefined the brand, steering his team through the reinvention of classic models and the transition to electric vehicles. Iconic designs like the Fiat 500, which entered the EV market in 2020, serve as a testament to Maserati’s ability to blend tradition with innovation.
Unlike other luxury car brands, Maserati embraces radical change with new designs every 10 to 15 years. Busse loves connecting with fans who follow the brand closely. He explains that each Maserati model reflects a specific era, from the elegant 35GT of the 1950s to the wedge-shaped designs of the 1970s and the bold aesthetics of the 1980s.
“I often ask fans, ‘What is Maserati for you?’ because their responses tell me so much about how they connect with the brand,” he shares.
Inspired by legendary Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, Busse balances tradition with modernity in his designs. As Giugiaro once told him, “We always do the best in the moment.” This philosophy resonates deeply with Busse, who believes in honouring the past while embracing future possibilities.
Through advances in technology, techniques, and societal trends, Busse ensures Maserati remains at the forefront of automotive design. For him, the creative process is more than just a job—it’s a way to create joy, connection, and timeless elegance.
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
New research suggests that bonuses make employees feel more like a mere cog in a wheel.
When the Writers Festival was called off and the skies refused to clear, one weekend away turned into a rare lesson in slowing down, ice baths included.
