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Fiat's taking over of Chrysler has given fruit to a new Maserati. The Maserati Kubang SUV concept is production ready and it will be the luxury brand's foray into the luxury SUV market. One which is populated by the Porsche Cayenne, Range Rovers and other large SUVs that are full of leather, wood, 22 inch wheels that their owners hardly take off-road. Anyway, the issue is that the underpinnings of this luxury SUV will come from a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Is that something sacrilegious? To base a Maserati on a run of the mill American SUV? I suppose it is as Maserati will put it into production regardless of whether we think it is sacrilegious or otherwise. I suppose only the basic underpinnings will be used as according to the press release Maserati claims that everything else; the engine, steering, drivetrain, suspension, exterior and interior styling will be purely Maserati. The still unspecified engine will come from Maranello and will be coupled with an eight-speed automatic transmission. As a result Maserati claims that the end product is "100% Maserati". I suppose it would be a Maserati. Like any Italian supercar or in this case an Italian SUV, the essence of any Italian supercar is in the engine and an engine manufactured in Maranello, home of Ferrari is truly Italian. If this new Maserati Kubang sounds as glorious as the Gran Turismo or the Quattroporte, no one will care whether or not the Kubang is based on a lowly Jeep Grand Cherokee.

If you think the introduction of the Porsche Cayenne, the Stuttgart-based sportscar company came as a shock to the automotive world, guess what the new Maserati concept did...turn heads. Like its German counterpart, the Kubang Concept (named after a Jayan wind), which was unveiled at the NAIAS is Maserati's take on the growing niche that is the high-performance SUV. The Kubang was designed by Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro. The Kubang is said to blend practicality and performance seemlessly. For starters, the versatile SUV configuration allows for seating up to seven. There's also an option for "executive seating" that reduces total passenger capacity to four, but space and comfort go up. The performance aspect of the Kubang comes from the company's venerable 4.2-liter V8 which develops an earth-shattering 390 bhp. This should blast the Kubang from 0-100 km/h in just 5.5 seconds and continue to a top-speed limit of 257 km/h. In addition to straight line performance, this Maserati has been given a low center of gravity coupled with a torque-sensing all-wheel drive system that gives the Kubang some needed handling prowess. if Maserati management gives the go signal, the Kubang could see itself as part of the line-up as early as 2005.