Alfa's return delayed or scrapped? 2005 Spider also scrapped?

[Jon Pike <jhpike@domain.elided>]

> This may have been posted already, not sure, but someone just give the May 20, 2002 Autoweek magazine with an article that said due to financial trouble of Fiat the plan to bring Alfa back in 2004 has been scrapped.  Also the the 2005 Spider (which is the car Alfa wants to bring back to the US first) is in question due to a lack of cash to properly develope the new all-wheel drive platform.
Saw an article (Forbes?) that I can't remember where it was from,  went 
over the details on what's going on there..  They have a new CEO, and a 
multi step plan to getting things back on track,  for the whole Fiat 
Group, of which Fiat Auto is only a part.of.  There would be several 
goals they would have to not meet over the next couple of years,  before 
they got to the drastic point...  dropping all car manufacturing.

How much of those would have to be missed,  before dropping SOME of the 
car production would be considered,  I don't know.   I would think that 
Alfa,  which has been gaining popularity and sales lately, wouldn't be 
first on the chopping block.  I'd think several Fiat models and Lancia 
would probably go first.
Of course tooling up a lot of new models,  and starting up a US support 
network ain't cheap, either..

It would be worth looking that article up again.. (was about a month 
ago) and trying to keep track of how well they do on the coming milestones..

Jon

Jon
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