FANGIO WOULD HAVE APPROVED; Automatic Tranny Retains Sportiness.(News)

Byline: PATRICK C. PATERNIE

No one would complain about a trip to Monte Carlo, but it did seem like a long way to go to test-drive a new automatic transmission. Even if that transmission is attached to the latest Maserati Quattroporte and this year celebrates 50 years since a Maserati driven by Juan Manuel Fangio won the Monaco GP, the first presided over by Princess Grace.

Using the latter as a metaphor to say that the Quattroporte exhibits a blend of the company's high-performance tradition with regal elegance was a stretch, but Roberto Ronchi, Maserati CEO, was candid on another point. Why did his company wait so long (the Quattroporte debuted at the 2003 Frankfurt auto show) to offer a fully automatic transmission in addition to the oft-criticized semi-automatic DuoSelect, nee Cambiocorsa?

"We have sold around 9000 with the DuoSelect transmission that emphasizes the sportiness of the car,'' said Ronchi. "We gained our niche as a sporty sedan because our customers preferred the DuoSelect, but we need the fully automatic transmission to increase our business. The U.S. is our target market, where we estimate that 80 percent of sales will be the automatic. We took over 18 months to develop an automatic because we must keep the sporty nature.''

Technical director Jean-Luc Brossard explained that retaining the Quattroporte's "sportiness'' with an automatic transmission was complicated by the 4.2-liter, 400-hp V8's 7000-rpm redline and a drivetrain layout with a transaxle at the rear for a handling-biased 47/53 front-to-rear weight distribution. The car was designed around the Duo-Select, adapted from Ferrari's F1 paddle-shift transmission. The full-automatic project entailed more than contracting ZF Friedrich-shafen AG to develop a Maserati-specific six-speed automatic that could deal smoothly with the high-revving engine; the car had to be reworked to mount that transmission forward, right behind an ...