motivation

[Pottree@domain.elided]

In a message dated 5/2/2002 7:35:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:


> It's hard to imagine GM actually bringing over Alfas to sell.  Of course
> GM's dropping Oldsmobile, which sold in the hundreds of thousands annually,
> and that makes you wonder what they'd expect sales-wise from Alfa Romeo....
> 
> ...Now you tell me how serious they could be about importing from Italy and
> selling a real enthusiasts' Alfa.
> 
> Mr. Goose
> 


You may think this is for the birds, but I can very easily imagine a 
motivation that has nothing to do with selling units, especially if most of 
the risk of the inventory is pushed off on erstwhile partner FIAT.  I think 
the General is looking for a quick and cheap way to inject some European sex 
and excitement (and sense of sophistication) into their dowdy, aging line.  
They are looking at the demographics outside the Midwest for once, and the 
fleet market, at the sensibilities of people who are not like their core 
customer base -- you know, the people who will make or break them in the 
years to come.  They show a glimmering, 30 years in the making, of looking 
forward instead of over their shoulders to the glory days of yore when they 
were truly fat and happy and all their international competitors lay in 
smoking ruins abroad.

Olds and Buick., I think, represent the old paradigm and they have outlived 
their usefulness and appeal -- the image they carry, which was once part of 
their success, is now poison as far as market segments with any future are 
concerned.  They are a languishing Maxwell House casting a yellowed eye at a 
booming Starbucks.  Alfa can give GM a shot in the arm, like a B12 vitamin 
injection; but a shot of vitamins, no matter how beneficial, is no substitute 
for a good healthy diet (or astronauts would just take a bottle of vitamins 
in o space; of course, they have to have actual food to survive).  Well, GM 
has been so focused on bland meat loaf and mashed potatoes for so long that 
they are grasping at a vitamin supplement somewhere, and Alfa is one vitamin 
I think they'll try to boost floor traffic at dealerships that appeal mainly 
to octogenarians (present company excluded)  and to recapture the yummy 
market segments  they let slip through their fingers due to being mind numb 
for so long.  I don't think it is about selling Alfa units in the USA.  It is 
about reinvigorating a geriatric giant.

Charlie
LA, CA, USA
"how come you know so much but you're still so poor?"
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