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Greg A. @ Jan 14th 2007 9:15PM
"While the sequential transmission, which remains on offer alongside the new automatic, has improved greatly over the years, the bean-counters evidently thought Maserati could sell more Quattroportes if it had a smoother-shifting conventional automatic, with torque-converter and all."
While the bean counters no doubt crunched some numbers and were satisfied with the resulting projections, this statement gives them far too much credit for the introduction of the fully automatic transmission. According to what I've read previously, many Maserati buyers assumed the DuoSelect transmission could easily be used by drivers who were used to driving an automatic (as Michael Karesh hints in his comment). The factory eventually told dealers to have their salespeople point out the true nature of the DuoSelect (and Cambiocorsa) to prospective buyers.
In other words, it didn't take any bean counters to realize that there was a sizable demand for Maseratis with fully automatic transmissions.