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Fiat's North American plans expected in the fall
May 27, 2008 - 1:10 pm ET
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) -- Italy's Fiat could decide in six months when and where it will start making and selling cars under its Alfa Romeo brand in North America, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
"The commitment is there (to find a way into the market), and it could even happen that we make a decision in the next six months," Sergio Marchionnetold reporters after receiving an honorary degree from a university in Turin, home to Fiat.
Marchionne said he aimed to start making the cars in North America between 2010 and 2011.
He also said Fiat should be able to defend its market share in its home market
despite an expected drop in sales this month, reiterating a forecast that he made last week.
"This month's volumes for the Italian car market are not good," he said. "We expect quite a fall.
"We can see that the market is spent. Not only for cars but for all products," he said, adding that Fiat as a group was doing fine nevertheless.
Fiat has been able to control about a third of the market this year despite the weak trend.
Italy's transport ministry will publish the new car registrations figures for May next week. Fiat's return to North America comes after a successful restructuring of the group, led by Marchionne.
It has been in talks with a number of parties about bringing the brand back to that region, including government representatives and officials from the auto industry.
Over the weekend, the head of Alfa Romeo, Luca De Meo, told a German magazine that Fiat had spoken with U.S. rival Chrysler [CBS.UL].
"The door is open," Marchionne told the reporters. "We're talking about everything with everybody.
"There are big opportunities. (For Fiat) it's a matter of choice. Everybody wants us," he said.
The move would save money for Fiat, as European exporters suffer from the euro's strength against the dollar.
It would also help automakers in the region that have been forced to reduce production at their plants due to a drop in sales.
Fiat has a presence in the market -- albeit small -- through its luxury brands Ferrari and Maserati, and a limited edition car by Alfa Romeo called the 8C Competizione.
Alfa wants ad boost from 8C supercar
Luca Ciferri Automotive News Europe March 5, 2008 15:36 CET
GENEVA -- Alfa Romeo could use its 8C supercars in advertising to give the brand an image boost.
Alfa Romeo CEO Luca De Meo is considering creating an advertising campaign to link the limited-edition supercars to its volume models. " The 8C Competizione and 8C Spider represent the true essence of the Alfa brand and it is a pity just to leave them in the garages of collectors," De Meo said.
Alfa unveiled the 8C Spider at the auto show here. The 8C is a convertible version of its flagship 8C Competizione coupe that went on sale in Europe last October.
The 8C Spider will go on sale in Europe early next year. It will start at 210,000 euros in Italy, 45,000 euros more than the coupe.
Alfa will build just 500 units of the 8C Spider and the same number for the 8C Competizione.
Alfa's main plant in Pomigliano d'Arco, Italy, resumed production on Monday after a two-month stoppage to refurbish its assembly line and retrain workers. The plant has been hit by quality problems.
De Meo said Alfa lost nearly 25,000 units because of the stoppage.
" We are trying our best to recover most of this lost volume in the coming months, planning to close the year with about 144,000 sales, the same level of 2007," he said.
Alfa Romeo could build cars in Mexico for U.S.
GENEVA (Reuters) -- Italy's Fiat SpA is considering Mexico as a base to build its Alfa Romeo sports cars for export to the United States, a huge market where it plans to return sometime after 2008.
Fiat has been thinking about building the cars somewhere in North America to avoid the cost of exporting them from Italy, given the euro's strength against the dollar.
"It could be Mexico," CEO Sergio Marchionne told Reuters Tuesday at the Geneva auto show when asked whether that country could be a likely location for a plant.
Fiat should decide later this year what to do, he added.
The head of Alfa Romeo, Luca De Meo, told Reuters in an interview that he and his team have yet to decide on what models to sell in the United States.
Details including the kind of distribution network to use should be disclosed in the coming months, he said.
Although Marchionne had previously set 2009 as the year to enter the United States, De Meo declined to confirm it.
But he said he had already started thinking about other markets where Alfa Romeo is present by reputation only.
"The United States is fine but there are also other regions where Alfa Romeo can use its image (to its advantage)," he said, citing China, Russia and South America as possibilities.
De Meo spoke to Reuters after showing off a convertible version of the Alfa 8C, a special edition car. Like the hardtop 8C, only 500 units of the convertible version will be sold.
De Meo took charge of Alfa Romeo in December after succeeding in turning around the Fiat brand.
Alfa Romeo is seen by analysts as a bigger challenge for him, however.
Although it could generate the biggest profit margins among Fiat's three brands, it needs a lot of work.
Its sales are mediocre and it loses trunkloads of money.
Years of poor parts and service have given it a bad name, denying it the premium status enjoyed by rivals like Volkswagen AG's Audi and BMW AG.
De Meo's predecessor, Antonio Baravalle, had focused on improving customer service and expanding the dealer network in Germany and United Kingdom, two key markets in which to expand.
The revival of the brand has included a refurbishment of its main plant at Pomigliano d'Arco in Italy; but the plant's closure for the last two months has led to a loss of sales.
De Meo said one of his priorities this year is to try to recover those sales.
Another priority is the launch of a compact car with the working name of the Junior. The car would mark Alfa Romeo's entry into a new segment with a younger clientele.
As he works towards the 2010 sales targets set by Marchionne for every division within the Fiat industrial group, De Meo said he hopes to restore Alfa Romeo's place among premium brands by the time of its 100th anniversary on June 25, 2010.
"We need to restore the values of Alfa Romeo," he said, adding that the brand's birthday could be marked by the launch of a new model apart from the 149 and 169 scheduled to come to market in the coming years.
Alfa Romeo ponders revival of The Graduate's car
FRANKFURT (Reuters Life!) - If Alfa Romeo's boss were to have one wish, it would be to bring the Duetto, Dustin Hoffman's car in the 1967 film classic "The Graduate", back on the road.
"That would be my dream," Antonio Baravalle, chief executive of the Italian sportscar maker, told Reuters at Frankfurt's international autoshow. "Small, compact, very low, only for two people -- exactly like the Duetto was back then."
Launched in 1966, the convertible gained notoriety a year later when it appeared in the film about Benjamin Braddock, a confused young man played by U.S. actor Hoffman.
The Duetto later went through a number of upgrades until it went out of production in 1994.
With Alfa Romeo's 100th anniversary coming up in 2010, Baravalle said he liked the idea of having a new version of the Duetto with which to celebrate.
Alfa Romeo is also targeting doubling sales and returning to profitability that year as part of an ambitious restructuring program that Fiat has set for all its car brands, including Maserati and Lancia.
Alfa Romeo has been losing money for years because of a reputation for faulty mechanics and poor customer service -- something which Baravalle is trying to reverse with a major overhaul of the premium brand.
Encouraged by the success that BMW has had in reviving the Mini, Fiat is trying its luck with another old model: the Cinquecento, which means 500 in Italian.
In July, it came out with a revised version of the tiny car that came to symbolize Italy's economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s when families living on a modest income were able to afford a car for the first time. Alfa Romeo prepares for relaunch in U.S. Maserati dealers in the United States may relaunch the Alfa Romeo brand in 2009, says James Selwa, CEO of Maserati North America.
Selwa is in charge of overseeing Alfa's return to the United States. Fiat S.p.A., which owns Maserati and Alfa, has said Alfa will relaunch here by 2010.
Until the relaunch, a select group of Maserati dealers will sell the Alfa 8C Competizione. Those dealers will be among those who get Alfa franchises. When the brand returns in earnest, it wants to launch four vehicles.
8C Competizione: The rear-drive, carbon fiber-laced Alfa Romeo coupe has a 4.6-liter V-8 engine with 450 hp, mated to a six-speed electronically controlled manual gearbox. U.S. dealers will begin selling the final 99 units of the 500-unit limited-edition $200,000-plus sports car in mid-2008.
159: A sporty sedan available in front- or all-wheel drive is expected here in late 2009 or early 2010.
Brea: A 2+2 coupe with minimal rear legroom and modest trunk space is expected in late 2009 or early 2010.
Spider: A two-seater riding on a shortened Brea wheelbase will probably use the same
Penske talking about selling Alfas FRANKFURT — Fiat executives have said that Maserati dealers will relaunch Alfa Romeo in the United States in 2009 or 2010.
But the situation could get more complicated.
Roger Penske, CEO of Penske Automotive, said here that he's had informal conversations with Fiat S.p.A. about becoming an independent distributor of Alfas.
Penske Automotive is the U.S. distributor for Mercedes-Benz's Smart brand, which goes on sale in the United States early next year.
A Fiat executive, who declined to be named, said, “Penske Auto Group is one of the options on the table for distributing Alfa Romeos in the U.S.”
James Selwa, CEO of Maserati North America, has been charged with overseeing Alfa's return to the United States. But Maserati has not begun setting up a dealer network for Alfa. Executives say it is too early, and that many hurdles remain.
A select group of Maserati dealers will sell the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione in mid-2008. Selwa has said those dealers may be among those who get Alfa Romeo franchises.
8C Competizione Alfa Romeo will make 8C Spider TURIN -- Alfa Romeo will build the 8C Spider, the convertible version of the limited-edition 8C Competizione supercar.
In a presentation to financial investors in New York City today, Fiat group CEO Sergio Marchionne said the 8C Spider will go on sale worldwide in 2009.
The 8C Competizione coupe went on sale this month in Europe. It starts at 165,000 euros. US sales start in mid-2008.
The 8C Spider is expected to cost about 20,000 euros more than the coupe.
Alfa will build 500 units of the 450hp two-seat coupe. A similar volume is planned for the 8C Spider.
A concept version of the 8C Spider was unveiled in August 2005 at the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance in Monterey, California.
  Designed and developed by the Alfa Romeo Style Center, the ‘8C Competizione’ prototype will be the veritable icon of the brand, with a name that evokes the great sports tradition of the Company. As borne out by the code ‘8c’, which in the Thirties and Forties already characterized the road and race cars equipped with the original 8 cylinder engine designed by the famous engineer Vittorio Jano.
The name ‘Competizione’ is a tribute to the 6C 2500 Competizione, the sports coupe driven by Fangio and Zanardi in the celebrated Mille Miglia race in 1950.
Thus, ‘8c Competizione’ is no mere fancy name, rather it is a reference to the brand’s long-standing involvement in sports. In reality, the Alfa Romeo legend was born to a significant extent of the wins obtained by its car models on the race tracks all over the world. So numerous that, by themselves, they add up to a long and fascinating story, made of people and agonistic passion, engines and cutting-edge technical solutions. The same protagonists who helped to create that inestimable human and technological heritage that continues to generate beautiful car models, full of character, and, above all, able to combine the emotion of styling with the pleasure of driving.
This is the background of the original, captivating style of this ‘straight 2-seater’, made of carbon fiber and generously sized: it is 1,900 mm wide, 4,278 long and 1,250 high, with a wheelbase length of 2,595 mm. Great dynamism is achieved by the horizontal ‘groove’ that surmounts the front wheel arches and extends into the sides.
Moreover, the large tires (245/40 - R20 at front and 275/35 - R20 at rear) and the ‘muscular’ rear wings accentuate the impression of individuality and strength of the model. All this, however, does not detract in the least from the elegance of the lines that run softly from the front to the rear, all the way to the light clusters set in the integral bumpers. The overall stylistic balance finds its maximum expression in the bold design of the backlight, which occupies the rear surface and partly enwraps the rear pillars. Of great historical and evolutionary significance is the rearrangement of the front elements the way they were in the most important Alfa sport cars of the past: the ‘whiskers’ and the shield, in fact, are aligned at the same level. Not to mention the fact that the entire bodywork is a sequence of classical references, an ideal stage where the Brand’s stylistic cues are revisited in a modern key. They can be identified at a glance: see for instance the front, evoking the features of the old on-road version of the 33 Coupe, or the tail, with the round lights clusters that characterized the Giulia TZ.
In short, the ‘8c Competizione’ concept car has an appeal that cannot be resisted, in that it is the purest expression of Alfa Romeo’s concept of the ‘motor car’. Indeed, with this unprecedented model, Alfa Romeo’s stylistic language takes yet another step forward. Compared to the ‘Nuvola’ concept car - which prefigured the shapes and surface treatments of Alfa Romeo’s new aesthetics -, the stylistic approach of the ‘8c Competizione’ exalts the brand’s DNA through a modern, hi-tech interpretation of the most renowned projects in the history of Alfa Romeo.
Nor should we forget a unique feature that has always characterized Alfa Romeo’s sports models and continues to do so today: the excitement that even the most sophisticated drivers invariably experience at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo. And the ‘8c Competizione’ is no exception to this rule. Just consider that the vital force under the bonnet is a 4.2 liter engine with 8 cylinders in V (90°) formation, supercharged by means of a volumetric compressor.
This powerful engine develops over 400 HP at 7,000 rpm and is mated to a rear-mounted mechanical 6-speed gearbox to achieve a top speed of over 300 km/h (168 mph), enabling the prototype to accelerate from 0 to 100 km (0 to 60 mph) in but 4 seconds and a half. The absolute performance capabilities of the V8 engine in terms of power and torque include both stunning peaks (over 45 kgm (325 lb-ft) at 4,500 rpm) and regular and progressive delivery, even at very low speeds, making the 8c into a car which is capable of exalting feats, but is also suitable for everyday use on regular roads, not just on the race tracks.
To its sparkling performance, the ‘8c Competizione’ adds extraordinary road holding and the handling of a purebred sports car. The merit goes to the double wishbone suspension (front and rear), ensuring maximum driving pleasure, and combining the superior control associated with front-wheel drive with exceptional sportiness and accuracy: the ideal combination when tackling mixed routes. It should also be noted that for this prototype Alfa Romeo selected front-wheel drive precisely in order to give free rein to the exuberance of the engine and offer emotions truly beyond compare.
The cockpit shares the same design logic as the bodywork, both in terms of compact, sport-orientated design, resulting in great lightness, and in terms of an exquisitely formal styling which, by striking the best balance between form and function, puts the emphasis on the most significant and characterizing features of the interior trim.
Formal analogies establish an intriguing consonance between the exterior and the interior: this is well exemplified by the rear wings, which underscore and highlight the wheels by creating a muscular contraction in the bodywork, while, internally, a corrugation in the smooth surface of the facia around the two round instruments produces an eye-catching effect.
The same scheme can be observed in the entire facia, where all the functional parts are enveloped and incorporated into the basic carbon surface, but their natural distinction in terms of shape and function, instead of being effaced, is forcefully underscored by the use of different materials: this applies to the black air nozzles, the black lid atop the dash and the highly refined cockpit made of dark-tinted aluminum.
The essential, sporty quality of the interior trim is further enhanced by the typical color scheme of race cars: mostly black, but enlivened by an artful counterpoint of light and dark elements, light and shade, achieved by a careful choice of materials. This configuration, which gets across an impression of structural lightness, was obtained by seeking the optimal balance between high-tech materials, carbon and aluminum, and traditional materials, leather and twisted natural fibers.
The contrast between smooth and rough textured surfaces generates a distinctive three-dimensional quality: the cockpit structure and the side sections of the seats - in aluminum and fine grained leather - have an intrinsically level texture, while the materials making up the broader, more uniform surfaces are characterized by the interplay of light and shade, as in the carbon expanses of the facia, the rear wall and the floor, the braided pattern of the central portion of the seats, the glossy composite material making up the door panels.
© Alfa Romeo Automobiles 2007 - Disclaimer  
windingroad.com/multimedia/Issue-28/Alfa-Romeo-8C-Competizione 8C Cutaway 
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