Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has tasked new Alfa Romeo CEO Harald Wester with bringing the brand closer to Abarth and Maserati.
Wester, who is already CEO of Abarth and Maserati, was given the Alfa role last week and Marchionne wants Wester to identify synergies between the three brands under his control.
“The purpose of bringing the Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Abarth brands under the same leadership is to emphasise and leverage the value of the shared qualities of the three brands in terms of their sporting characteristics and performance,” he said.
“Harald Wester, who has demonstrated his enormous commitment on several fronts and achieved optimum results, will bring strong leadership capabilities and solid technical experience and know-how to this project.”
Wester has taken the Alfa top job from Sergio Cravero, who becomes Fiat’s product and concept car planner.
Alfa Romeo is currently under strategic review and Fiat will reveal the outcome in the spring. The worst case scenario for Alfa Romeo would be a freeze on development after the launch of the Giulietta.
“Alfa has been underperforming for a long time,” Marchionne told Autocar at the Detroit motor show. “It has been the most difficult part of Fiat’s recovery, even though on paper it looks so attractive. The marque isn’t for sale or anything like that.
“It’s our problem. But we do have to rethink our objectives and be realistic with ourselves before we do anything else.
“First, I want to see how well we do launching the Giulietta. From the technical point of view it’s a huge step forward, but I want to see how it fares. And I want to see how we can take advantage of that through the company.”
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Re: Alfa, Maserati, Abarth 'merge'
Good call challenger400, I think you're bang on the money there!
Re: Alfa, Maserati, Abarth 'merge'
I'd have to politely disagree on that one - they (Abarth) made ethere own besoke vehicles and were very successful in their day - admittedly largely back in the 60's.
However, I'd definitely agree that the Abarth 'brand' has woefully lost it's way over the years and even the recent relaunch looks to me as though there is a lot more smoke than fire - Abarths don't have plastic engine covers for example... For me the last real Abarth was the 131, with a possible nod to the Strada 130tc of the late 80's, but after that... "pear shaped" doesn't begin to describe it.
For me Abarth has to do a similar thing to Renault Sport and keep bringing out better and faster versions of their products - and these products need to be good - damn good. Abarth's should be stripped out products, with lightness added and (to some extent)unique engines and running gear. If Harald thinks he can create an Abarth brand by just plastering scorpions all over a Punto Turbo, he'd best think again, the game has moved on.
So Harald - please lets have a 'real' Abarth tweaked version of that 1750 turbo unit shoe-horned into a Punto with silly recaros, plastic rear seats, a sticky diff, an exhaust note that scares children and handling twitchy enough to put the fear of god into an Autocar Roadtester... I dare you.
Re: Alfa, Maserati, Abarth 'merge'
MArchionne is so negative, never seen a head of an organisation try to kick his own product in the teeth so much.
Abarth is not a brand, merely a tuning company.