Geneva show: Maserati’s Alfieri breaks cover

IMAGES of a low-slung, compact Jaguar XF-rivalling Maserati concept have leaked online ahead of the sportscar’s Geneva premiere tonight.

The images bubbled up on the internet just hours before the trident-badged Alfieri concept was set to make its world debut at the Swiss expo.

The images show a deeply sculpted, compact two-door coupe wearing the Italian brand’s trademark shark-mouth grille, and a body defined by the traditional long front overhang and a shorter one down the rear.

While the front of the show car has a very Maserati feel to the design, down the rear the heavily shaped haunches allow the roofline to cut in to a small glass hatch over the cargo area.

The tail-lights are shaped into rear-engined supercar-like air vents pushed to either side of a diffuser that reveals a pair of chrome-tipped exhaust pipes, suggesting it may be a twin-turbo V6, and not a bigger bent-eight, under the bonnet.

Details are scant ahead of the Alfieri’s official reveal, but as well as trying to run down Jaguar’s supercharged V6 line-up, the new sportscar is also likely to chase Porsche’s 3.8-litre flat-six 911 Carrera in terms of performance.