A future baby Quattroporte has been churning the rumor-mill for awhile, but we can finally say that Maserati->ke51 has started intensive testing of the future baby sedan. Rumored to be called "Levante," the smaller Quattroporte->ke336 will be looking to trample the sales of the Mercedes E-Class->ke373, the Audi A6->ke934, and the BMW 5-Series->ke317 when it comes out in late 2013.

What we have in these spy shots is a mule of the upcoming model, not the real deal and not just some random Quattroporte. The wheels don't really fit into the wheel arches, especially at the front wheel - a clear sign for a shorter wheel base. We can also see that the brakes are smaller than the ones we have seen on all of the Quattroporte prototypes.

The upcoming Maserati Levante will be offered with both V6 and V8 engines, connected to a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox. We're really hoping that the V6 engine will be a new unit developed in cooperation with Ferrari->ke252 and not by Chrysler Pentastar.

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