Re: "they should only sell overtly sporting cars."

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-505 Keith Walker writes:
"I was under the impression that the Sud had been prepared for sale in the
USA, and had been homologated, but the plan was cancelled when Alfa decided
that they should only sell overtly sporting cars. Thus the Sud import plans
folded along
with the imports of the Alfetta and the plans for the Alfa 6."

My understanding is that quite a few cars passed through the Fiat facilities
in Detroit for various kinds of tests, including compliance, without any
explicit assumption that importation was anticipated. I very much doubt that
"the plan
was cancelled when Alfa decided that they should only sell overtly sporting
cars."; "overtly sporting cars" is a small and fickle base, and I am sure Alfa
would have preferred to develop a broader base analogous to that of BMW or
Mercedes or the Japanese manufacturers, rather than a narrow base analogous to
that of Porsche. "Thus the Sud import plans folded along with the imports of
the Alfetta and the plans for the Alfa 6" is not supported by the evidence.
The importation of the Alfa 6 was probably dropped because of a hard look at
the competition; the Alfetta sedans were discontinued here because they were
shipping unsold (and presumably unsalable) cars back to Italy. The final pull-
out from the US market was not because they could not have sold modest numbers
of state-of-the-art sport cars here, but because the 164 did not generate the
substantial volume of sales which they had hoped for, but not achieved, with
the Milano. 

Alfa always was a sedan-building company, which could also sell appreciable
numbers of 2+2 coupes and modest numbers of Spiders, and their US image was
totally out of synch with rest-of-the-word realities. For the 1750, roughly
synchronous with the introduction of the Alfasud, Alfa sold 4,049 Spiders in
the USA and 4,039 in the rest of the world; 2,475 GTs in the USA and 40,969 in
the rest of the world; 1,759 Berlinas in the USA and 94,104 in the rest of the
world. The suggestion that the coupes were purchased as much for their quasi-
sedan capability as for their performance capabilities is supported both by
the very modest number of two-seat coupes and by the sales of the 1300 cc GT
Juniors which were greater (for the years Fusi covers) than the combined sales
of Giulia Sprint GTs, Giulia Sprint GT Veloces, and 1750 GT Veloces. Would the
sales here of 4,000 Spiders, 2,500 coupes, and 1,700 sedans have been
augmented by adding perhaps 10,000 Alfasuds to the distribution pipeline? I
suspect not.

One could argue that the eventual fate of Alfa in the US market was sealed by
the success of the Giulietta Spiders, which established a perceived identity
here which was unrelated to either the actuality or the aspirations of Alfa's
world position.

Sincerely,

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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