The new Maserati GranTurismo sports car, which will make its world public debut in just over a week and a half's time in Geneva, is set to be the very latest in a long line of illustrious and successful Trident models to emerge from Modena that have been styled by Italian design house Pininfarina.

Commenting on the official announcement of the Maserati GranTurismo earlier this week, Andrea Pininfarina, the Chairman CEO of Pininfarina said: "We are very proud to continue such a high prestige partnership with a vehicle that will promote "Made in Italy" all over the world.  Technically speaking, this new coupé, with its decidedly sporting temperament, has the advantage of deriving from such a well tested-and-tried product such as the Quattroporte, the “flagship” that marked our renewed cooperation with Maserati and which scored a great success, also winning numerous international awards. The input as regards styling came from Pininfarina: the GranTurismo is, in fact, inspired by our Birdcage 75th concept."

The modern day revival of the Maserati marque really got underway in earnest at the end of the last decade when the prodigious rebirth of the Trident Brand was fostered by the newly formed Ferrari-Maserati Group, first with the Coupé and Spyder, and then in 1993 with the Quattroporte, which took centre stage at the 2003 Frankfurt IAA, its bodywork created and designed by Pininfarina. Following on from the launch of the Coupé and Spyder, this luxury sedan provide Maserati with a further excellent opportunity to reaffirm its renewed image, in step with leading edge technology and in line with its own historical past.

The Quattroporte itself represented a cornerstone of this great tradition, the sedan's lineage having been an important element in Maserati production since 1963. And equally important has been the collaboration with Pinin Farina – at that time, the name and surname of the Turin coachbuilder were written separately – which left its mark right from the beginning as Maserati began its rise to join the prestige brands. That was in 1947, in the aftermath of the disastrous interlude of the war which had nevertheless not affected the prestige of Maserati won in over thirty years of outstanding sporting achievements. But, for the company with the Trident trade-mark, the time had come to profit commercially from this reputation, as its financial situation at the time was far from satisfactory. The Maserati brothers therefore decided to supplement their sporting activities with the production of high performance touring cars.

And so the first Maserati – the A6 1500 Coupé - came off the production-line, with Pinin Farina in charge of its bodywork. State-of-the-art technical solutions – tubular chassis, light-alloy engine with displacement divided over six cylinders, single overhead camshaft - were accompanied right from the first prototype by equally attractive formal proposals.

These include innovative styling, enhanced by highly sophisticated aerodynamic features, albeit still fairly empirical in definition, a double side-hinged engine bonnet, transparent, openable roof, the great graphic impact of the front, with its retractable headlight-covers, and the radiator grille brilliantly inspired by the butterfly-wing type which had long been the unmistakable identifying mark of the Maserati single-seater.

Pinin Farina had always been a thoroughly convinced advocate of this priceless genetic heritage which has only in more recent times been seen as the cornerstone of the brand's identity.
 

In fact, right from the very first cars in regular production, the Maserati A6 1500 had its own, very exclusive identity, pointed up by its sober, harmonious and extremely elegant lines, its formal, creative shape being a logical progression from the famous Cisitalia 202 which Pininfarina had brought out the year before. Just over 60 units of this amazing Maserati A6 1500 were produced between 1947 and 1951, some of them convertibles, which then evolved into the A6G 2000 version - still remembered today as a masterpiece ahead of its time, although production would be limited to very few cars.

However, alongside this highly prestigious coupé, Pinin Farina also brought out a competition berlinetta – interpreted in the most authentic spirit of Maserati at their premises in Viale Ciro Menotti: this was the A6 GCS which came out at the end of 1953. Based on the A6 GCS barchetta it had a very prominent, oval radiator-grille - a feature common to several Maseratis right up to the present day – that is perceived as one of the most clear-cut styling cues of the Maserati brand.

Meantime, however, the time had come when Enzo Ferrari was to systematically hand over the design and production of the bodywork for all his road vehicles to Pinin Farina – a partnership which has lasted for over half a century and which has enabled very advanced construction technologies to be developed in the field of extremely high-performance GT vehicles in a climate of extraordinary, mutual collaboration. Then in 1999 the two great brands, Ferrari and Maserati, which once competed with each other at the very top of Italian car production, merged into a single Group, each with its own virtues and its own market mission, opening up new, important initiatives which took material form in the Maserati Quattroporte. With its modern, elegant lines, a unique, unmistakable personality that is recognisable at a glance, the Quattroporte was an embodiment of the Ferrari-Maserati Group’s leading edge technologies. In particular, for the first time on a high-performance saloon car, aerodynamic research allowed noteworthy aerodynamic loads to be obtained thanks to careful shaping of the underbody, thus offering an appreciable improvement in directional stability and dynamic safety at high speeds.

Two years ago sweeping new organisational changes made within the Fiat Group saw Maserati returned to the control of Fiat Auto (now Fiat Group Automobiles Spa) but Pininfarina retained their brief to style the next breed of Modena sports cars. The first of these, the Maserati GranTurismo, debuts on 6th March in Geneva, and it pays homage in its lines to the finest traditions of Maserati and Pininfarina's long history entwined together.