Italian exotic car manufacturer Maserati has recalled five examples of its Ghibli and Quattroporte models sold in 2014 because the "gear shift position indicators and warnings may not be sufficient to deter drivers from exiting the vehicle when the transmission is inadvertently left in a gear other than 'park'."
At issue, we believe, is the electronic shifters used in these cars, which don't move through a shift gate the way a traditional automatic shifter does. Instead, the shift lever stays in the same "rest" position regardless of what gear the car is in. This recall reminds us one issued by Chrysler earlier this year.
Those indicators and warnings are there, obviously, to prevent the vehicle from rolling away after the driver gets out, but this particular one raises some questions: Maserati says it sold 468 vehicles in Canada in 2014, and it surprises us that only five of them were these two particular models.
Maserati dealers are being instructed to update these vehicles' software to "include additional features to protect against driver error."
