Re: They should stick to making sporty cars

[MAXLTV@domain.elided]

In a message dated 2/27/99 3:33:05 PM EST, owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided
writes:

<< 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.
  >>

This is an interesting article, and yet, Alfa seemed to position itself into
selling mostly Spiders and Coupes here in the US, by virtue of plain demand.
For one, although Alfa improved "build quality" in successive sedan models, it
could never hope to compete with BMW with American buyers. It's ad campaign
for the Spider, "The Official Car of Summer," would seem to be an
acknowledgment of this. Alfa may indeed have always been a sedan building
company, but we can also thank the Italian government for purchasing scads of
fleet cars for the Carabinieri and government officials, Italy's idea of a
Crown Victoria. From what I've read about the 'Sud, the car was just too
punishing to own. 

The Alfa brand here could only be seen as something for people who wanted a
Ferrari flavor. The Maserati Biturbo was a nice try at this as well, but
having owned two of them, it's failure was understandable.  Also of note,
Maserati coupes and Spiders also outsold their four door counterpart. That's
the market, and there is no sense fighting it. To most Americans, there is no
such thing as a practical Italian car.  

  So if Alfa seemed schizoid in this country, it's because in it's later
years, it didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. That Alfa could continue
selling the Spyder, a design that was positively ancient, with at least some
success, tells me they let go too easily. The Alfa website lists distributors
in the most remote countries in the world, some of them even at war, and yet,
in the richest and most populous market in the world, an industrial giant of
Europe refuses to compete. 

Much could be said about this.  

Meantime, the inroads made by the SLK, Z3 and Miata, with more models to come,
essentially poaching on Alfa's once secure base in this segment, may have
sealed Alfa's fate in the US for quite some time. I feel the current Spider
and coupe would have done well in this country, given a chance.  


- -Don

------------------------------