Maserati is planning a new SUV — but its Levante is still worth a look (FCAU)

Maserati Levante

The Levante was Maserati's first SUV.
It helped increase sales for the brand in 2016 and 2017.
Now it will be joined by a small SUV.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the Levante SUV for Maserati. The brand came back to the US over a decade and a half ago, but since the financial crisis and amid an SUV boom, it's been selling only stylish luxury sedans and sexy GT sports car.

That all changed in 2016, and it couldn't have happened at a more important time for the Italian automaker, part of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles empire. It's down at the bottom of the luxury sales hierarchy in the US, with a puny 0.1% overall market share (Porsche sells five times as many vehicles annually).

The Quattroporte and Ghibli sedans have their fans (me, for example). But in the US and increasingly China, you really need a strong crossover offering. Porsche established the template for an automaker that had never built an SUV crossing that river in the early 2000s when it created the Cayenne, a hugely successful vehicle.

Maserati took the same plunge, and it's paid off as sales have steadily risen in 2017. Now FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne will greenlight a second SUV, smaller than the Levante but that continues the trend.

We first saw the Levante when it was revealed at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show and later in the flesh at the New York auto show. Last year, we got some time behind the wheel, from a working farm and restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, about an hour north of New York, to Bear Mountain.

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