[alfa] Re: Alfa's US return

[George Graves <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wish to enlarge my earlier statement, below, with this further 
thought.

Even now as we discuss this, The US, Canada, Japan, and the EU are in 
talks aimed at unifying automobile safety  and testing standards across 
the board. Someday soon, hopefully, a car which is deemed compliant 
with EU safety standards will, by that very fact, also be automatically 
compliant with US specs as well. This will help to eliminate a lot of 
costly - and largely redundant- testing and red tape. This should, of 
course, keep costs down, but it will also once again mean that 
Americans can go to Europe, buy whatever makes and model of cars they 
want, whether they are officially sold here or not, and bring them back 
legally. It will also open the US up for gray-market importers, 
something that the existing laws have pretty much eliminated. In my 
opinion, this could be our last, best hope for ever being able to buy 
new Alfas and drive them once again, on the streets and highways of the 
USA.


George Graves
'86 GTV-6 3.0 'S'


On Nov 18, 2004, at 10:31 PM, alfa-digest wrote:

>
> Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:01:01 -0800
> From: George Graves <gmgraves@domain.elided>
> Subject: [alfa] Re: Alfa's US return
>
> 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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