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The Alfa Romeo brand's future has been put under review by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne.

With Alfa sales dropping and the brand losing money, Marchionne is weighing up freezing all investment in the brand or refreshing Alfa's line-up using Chrysler platforms to replace the 159 and discontinued 166.

"We need to work a lot harder on Alfa to make an intelligent decision that effectively preserves the highest possible value to Fiat," Marchionne told Automotive News Europe.

Marchio...Read the full article

Clarkson and others will be weeping in their beer. This could be the end of Alfa as anything other than a badge.  A shame in one sense since this is a brand with real heritage and some beautiful designs.  Sadly the non-build quality has killed this off in much the same way as Lancia.  Putting a Alfa badge on a Chrysler platform is the ultimate insult.

They are so short term, they need to create some new Alfas and then sell them down the line as Chrysler and Fiats, instead of doing this back business model back to front. VW have been succeeding at doing this for years.

Yes - It's not going well!

 We seem to have had the discussion about insulting an historic marque by putting it's badge on a Chrysler not so long ago regarding Lancia - not all on here will agree! I love at least the history of Lancia and Alfa - I just wish Fiat could get their act together, build and differentiate their products better. VW manage to differentiate between Audi/VW/Seat/Skoda without much bother. Surely if they made Alfa's rear wheel drive and sporty / Lancia's luxury front wheel drive with four wheel drive on the range toppers / Fiats the basic brand - and raise the bar with build quality - they would be most of the way to covering all of the German territory.

 How hard can it be!

MartyB59:

How hard can it be!

 

 

... well - when you have lost around 3 billion Euros in 10 years - I guess it is going to be ruddy difficult to recover from this mess !

Chrysler platforms being "AlfaRomeoized"?? The idea is as ugly as the language!

crashbangwallop:

A shame in one sense since this is a brand with real heritage and some beautiful designs.  Sadly the non-build quality has killed this off in much the same way as Lancia.

Alfa build quality has been much improved in recent years (along with every other brand in the Fiat group, for that matter). The problem is that they're not making exciting enough cars to wash away the memories of abysmal quality. I think they'd see a significant sales improvement by slapping RWD and some punchier engines on the existing range.

Agreed but why have'nt they done it?

crashbangwallop:

A shame in one sense since this is a brand with real heritage and some beautiful designs.

This should read "........since this is a brand with real heritage and has had some beautiful designs." The current new cars, Mito and soon to be released Guilietta, are just plain awful to look at with those appalling front ends. They have improved the build qualty but they seriously need to revise the styling, that look was great on the 8C but the translation to other models just does not work.

oh come on, Alfa's based on Chryslers!!! Why not just kill the brand now & have done with it!

Merchoinne isn't stupid its not hard to see why Alfa's sales have tumbled, the 147 is old, the 159/Spider/Brera trio just aren't good enough, & its takes too long for Alfa to introduce new cars. I love the brand, but the way its been handled is woeful. Having said that though i'm pretty sure Alfa could build a BMW beater & they still wouldn't sell, Alfa as a brand is a joke to everyone bar those who love the brand.

People left their 3 series etc for the 156, & that turned out to be a very expensive problem as it wasn't built as well as it should have been, & then come re-sale time they couldn't give the thing away, so people left ALfa in droves, & i wonder does Alfa appeal to anyone now who isn't an Alfa enthusiast, i seriously doubt it!

Alfa's just being rebaged Fiat's wasn't the answer, so rebadged Chryslers doesn't bare thinking about.....

I've owned two alfas in the recent past, and ALMOST bought a third this week.  The issue as has been pointed out is that the cars are not exciting enough... but also lack any real choice.  Up until the launch of the 1750 there was a very poor choice in engines, yes the 3.2 was good, but you are gonna pay at the pumps / tax. 

And I will leave my discussions on the dealer network to a different thread, all be it that the ones I used to deal with have both lost their franchise (which couldn't have come soon enough). 

Alfa is a brand people want to buy and own, they just dont have the product and the service to enable that.

 

 

I'm not feeling good about this. Alfa used to be a rival for BMW, in fact, BMW was actually a more reliable and less exciting alternative to Alfa. But now, all we got is the outdated 147, Grande Mito, heavy 159 and...nothing. Is that enough? Some "premium" brands like Infiniti or Lexus would give billions of dollars just to have Alfa's cult status, legacy and history, while Volkswagen's charade about Audi's 100 years only confirms that. It's really sad that Fiat doesn't know how to exploit its full potential. Shame.