Global Financial Crisis be damned! Maserati has recorded its best-ever year on record, posting its second consecutive record breaking sales year in a row.

Worldwide deliveries to customers totalled almost 8,600 units, an all-time best result for the marque and an increase of almost 17 percent over its 2007 result.

As we noted recently with Rolls-Royce sales, the North American market for premium performance and luxury vehicles appears to be bucking the massive downturn being experienced in the rest of the industry. In fact, sales of Maseratis in the US increased in 2008 and this market remains Maserati’s largest.

Italy is the second largest buyer of Maseratis, the United Kingdom comes in at third, Germany in fourth, Japan in fifth. In sixth place is France, followed by Switzerland, China, Australia, UAE, Hong Kong - with Australia seeing the largest single year-on-year increase, with a rise of 50 percent in 2008 over its 2007 performance.

Maserati said that its revenues for the first nine months of 2008 amounted to €596 million, up 22.9 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. We all know that it was the last three months of 2008 that saw car sales plummet, so Maserati’s figures for this period would make interesting reading.

Maserati saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries to its network compared to the first nine months of 2007. It says this performance is even more significant considering that the total car market in each of Maserati’s leading markets shrank by an average of about 15 percent.