Alfa Romeo 5 billion euros to waste

Posted on 07-05-2014 at 16:10 by CasperH – 52 Comments”

There is almost no brand with more fans than the Alfa Romeo, and yet, this brand has managed to itself to be reduced to an irrelevant player on the market. An overview of the product plans of Alfa Romeo, such as for the past eight years the review passed shows in a painful way on how deep they have now sunk.

Here in the newsroom we love Alfa Romeo. Really true, even for a front wheel drive Alfa’s appear with some regularity in the parking lot of our editorial staff. Some (we won’t name names, Wouter) were even several times lured into buying an Alfa as daily transport. Perhaps it is also known, therefore, that the conclusion that I’m going to pull hurt in our autohart, but it must be said that Alfa Romeo is dying.

“Yes but why,” I hear you thinking, “they have just 5 billion got to be on top?”

That may be it, but I doubt even 50 billion is enough if you have a management that so ruthlessly continues to fail. For the past eight years, hang on to each other of empty promises and lies. Let’s start in 2006, when Alfa Romeo’s plans, presented t/m 2008. In 2007, there would be a new C-segment car but we had to wait until 2010 until we are finally in a Giulietta could drive. It was a harbinger of what was to come: announcements of new models, which are endless.

There followed a new plan in 2010: in 2012 the long-awaited successor of the 159 the light of day should have seen it: the Giulia. As a sedan and station would this car to the market in the must roll. But there was no Giulia. And there was no SUV in the C segment. Maybe in 2013 then, as will be later announced. But those plans ran out on nothing. Empty promise upon empty promise, there was nothing useful. Yes ok, we got the 4C, a fun but kneiterduur sports car where the brand is never of can live. You wonder if the developers didn’t better some time in a volumemodel had to stop it. Our readers call Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne in the meantime, Victor Muller of Italy.

And then there was yesterday’s big announcement of Fiat: Alfa Romeo 5 billion euros to get back on and in 2018 it will sell up to 400,000 cars, almost 5.5 times as much as now. The whole was accompanied by a grand presentation (PDF) that largely emphasize what Alfa Romeo has achieved in the last century. That the brand is fantastic, the best, the world has dominated in regards to racing, etc. etc. etc. As colleague Ricardo casually remarked during the reading of the Powerpoint: “It is as if I go to an album of Kanye West at the listening am: a mix of unworldly comments and puffery.”

Alfa says that the first step to return to its own “DNA” is set with the 4C. And of course there was a fine sheet containing a summary of the future models. And what do you think? The Giulia (as you know, ever intended for 2012) is at the end of 2015, was introduced and in the period from 2016 to 2018, there should be seven more new models added. Seven! If we have something we can learn from the last eight years is that seven new models are not going to come.

Better yet: let’s hope that there is never going to come. Let’s hope that there is someone high up in the Fiat Chrysler Group, the insight that it is better to use five billion euros in the development of two or three good cars on their own platform to stop. Better than a lot of gerebadgde Chryslermeuk on the market to fall. And before there’s a lot of hate-mail my way: the Giulia (we are pretty sure that in the coming years, however), is based on the Maserati Ghibli, which is in turn based on the Chrysler LX platform. That is the platform of Chrysler that on a Mercedes platform from the 90s was based.. there is the Chrysler 300 built on it.

If you say you want to go back to your own DNA, then you have no cars to build based on what others before you screwed together, then you need your own DNA to create. An own platform, its own identity. Eight models uitpoepen and your sales more than fivefold increase in four years time is impossible for a brand that now only 74.000 cars per year sell. The plans are a year bigger and wilder, you range of models to be smaller and suffer.

You can be in five years time the Giulia is not finish but now promise you in a little more than 3.5 years, eight new cars on the market? Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Sergio Marchionne, this is a call from a lover: hood with delusions of grandeur. As we from the productplanningen can see you are nothing.

Gallery: Alfa Romeo product plans

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