[alfa] Re: Alfa's US return

[George Graves <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I told you before. Alfa is NOT coming back to the US anytime in the 
foreseeable future. I know people at Fiat/Alfa Romeo and I spoke with 
them about this while I was there last month. They tell me that Fiat 
would like to keep it's options open for a return to the North American 
market, but that it's simply a vague notion at this point. There is no 
date (but I was told that it probably won't be before 2010, if even 
then- but even that's the PR guy's personal opinion), there is no "US 
Marketing Department", not even on paper. There is no marketing 
research being done or even a dealer network plan, and no department 
has any responsibility in any of those areas. In other words, no real 
plans to return even exist. And one top Fiat official said recently at 
some news conference, that he doubted seriously if Alfa would EVER 
return to the US market.

The only glimmer of sunlight in this cloudy sky is the fact that Luca 
Di Montezemolo, the head of Ferrari is now the Chairman of Fiat (not 
the car division, but Fiat corporate). While at Ferrari, he was quite 
outspoken about the fact that he wanted Alfa Romeo taken out from under 
the Fiat Auto group and placed under the Ferrari/Maserati group. He 
said that Alfa historically belonged in the company of Ferrari, and 
that with the existing Ferrari/Maserati dealer network already in 
place, it would be easy to start introducing models to the North 
American market. Since he became Top Dog at Fiat, I've heard nothing 
about him moving Alfa out from under Fiat Auto, nor have I heard that 
he's made any statement with regards to the possibility of Alfa's US 
return.

I don't see how it could be any more plain than that.

George Graves
'86 GTV-6 3.0 'S'



On Nov 18, 2004, at 3:45 PM, alfa-digest wrote:

>
> Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:06:14 -0500
> From: "Chris Sasso" <Chris.Sasso@domain.elided>
> Subject: [alfa] Alfa's US return
>
> Hi All,
>
> While I appreciate all the "don't count on it" opinions based on the
> 2002 Autonews article, I was hoping someone had some information on the
> note in the December 2004 Popular Mechanics issue.  I assume this
> information must be reasonably more up to date and been soured from
> someone with knowledge.  Does anyone here have more information?
>
> Chris
> Miami, FL
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