European cars built in America

[Biba <biba@domain.elided>]

Yesterday sitting right where I am now, in front of the monitor,  an old
car whizzed by. Walking around the corner, there it was sitting idling
with several people around it. To be honest I'm not particularly
interested in really vintage cars (what can you do with them except
drive them in 4th of July parades?), but a very large car inside the
owner's industrial unit did fascinate me. It was a 1913, 6 cylinder, 8
liter, American made Fiat. Forget what city but the owner showed me the
threshold plate which stated Turin / (US city). It's build quality
appeared to be almost equal to say a Silver Ghost.

I loaned him a battery charger. About an hour later he whizzed by. It
sounded extremely smooth and fairly quiet. Later I asked him if he
rebuilt the engine. He said it had never been touched. It only had 30K
miles on it. Quite amazing.

It occurred to me, why doesn't Fiat build cars in the US once again? It
appears to be working pretty well for BMW. Most of the cutting edge
design offices for both European and Japanese auto manufacturers are in
Southern California.

I say Fiat, because it would make sense to get a strong foothold in the
US which would include building up a good dealership network (I'm
convinced Fiat's and AR's downfall in the past), then start importing
the rest of the lineup - Lancia, Alfa, Maserati. Since Europe's smog,
etc. laws are getting almost as strict as ours, there certainly isn't
the gap there was in say, 1980.

Dear Mr. Agnelli: I've got this great idea on how you could become rich
;o) ...

Biba
AlfaCyberSite http://home.earthlink.net/~biba

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