Monday, 25 February 2013

Back to Alfa status? - Marchionne's plan for beleaguered Alfa Romeo

It's about time Alfa Romeo pulled their act together.

Past reputations of dodgy build quality, unreliability and questionable choices aside, think back to what Alfa Romeo have done in the past. Before their predominant absence from the market, they were producing gold, model after model. Remember the GTV/Spider of 1995? A car so strikingly beautiful that I dreaded its replacement for fear of them producing something which couldn't follow the model's dazzling looks. Albeit flawed and marred heavily by Alfa's tradition of squidgy 

And how wrong I was! The Brera stormed onto the car scene like a dazzlingly beautiful, glamorous woman waltzes into a greasy spoon. Nothing came close to its looks, and when the 159 followed suit, it seemed like Alfa was onto a real winner; filling a variety of segments with at least adequate cars, with flair and style, attracting a left-field market from the increasingly bland offerings from Bavaria, Ingolstadt and Stuttgart. 

But since the overweight and underpowered 159 was pulled from Alfa's line-up, and the 166 faded into obscurity and was also pulled, unnoticed by anyone, between 2007 and 2011, Alfa Romeo has offered just the Mito, before the introduction of the Giulietta in 2010. However good the Giulietta and MiTo are, Alfa Romeo is not a small car specialist. Their turf lies in the alternative market; people who don't want the ubiquity of a Z4 or the hairdresser image of a TT or SLK so opt for a Spider.

But there is no need to fear - the 4C (pictured; courtesy of Cédric Janodet on Flickr) is on its way. Due to be officially unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show next month, the 4C on appearance alone is getting the blood of car fans everywhere pumping. Alright, the slightly-too-pale matte red of the concept wasn't the best colour for it, perhaps a more vivid scarlet would have matched the £50,000 sports car's appearance more suitably, but it's plain to see that the 4C is going to follow Alfa's achingly-gorgeous archetype, bringing old customers back to familiar territory.

So the 4C is just the start of Sergio Marchionne's grand plan to bring Alfa back from fading away, including the Giulia, also due to be unveiled at Geneva. The plan spans a number of years and will see several new models in addition to the 4C and Giulia introduced into the Alfa Romeo lineup, including a small and larger SUV, the smaller of which could be based on Fiat's 500X platform, which it shares with Jeep's upcoming 'Baby Jeep' model.

So things at Fiat/Chrysler Group are set to get a lot more crowded over the coming years, only a few short years after both companies reported dismal sales figures and Chrysler began administration proceedings.

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