Re: Alfa haters and BMW

["Tim Hancock" <timhancock@domain.elided>]

People always 'hate' something they perceive as a threat, and I suspect this
has a lot to do with the BMW/Alfa relationship. I had the chance, quite some
years ago now, to have BMW company cars on three or four occasions, and even
had a couple of test drives. What put me off was the smugness of the dealers
in the UK, and in a blatant admission of inverse snobbery...the ' type' of
people I saw driving round in them. The cars quite impressed me...except you
could get a bundle more performance and 'fun' for the same or less money with
an Alfa. Alfa owners ( we few we happy few) seemed far less caught up in the
'image' thing that seems to permeate BMW ownership.

What you can't get away from is the fact that BMW dealers in the UK....love em
or hate em...have a high level of credibility that Alfa can only dream of, and
that this is based on a fundamentally well made product that delivers much of
what is promised. Lets face it the BMW story is a magnificent success story
since the virtually bankrupt days of 1960.

What you can't get away from either is that BMW residual prices hold up far
better than Alfa prices. This is a trend that even the modern Alfas are
struggling with. Interestingly, whilst car fleet buyers this year voted the
Alfa 156 as the car they would most like to be seen in, hard economics has
tended to dictate that this has not been translated into allowing Alfa into
company car fleet lists,and this seems to sum up the Alfa enigma in the UK.
People see the cars and love them, but they do not trust the product, or the
infrastructure supporting it, quite enough to make the final commitment. Alfa
sales have been much improved of late, but they have slipped back recently and
whilst sales broke the 20,000 mark in the UK last year (a record) they are
going to struggle to get anywhere near this figure this year.


Tim Hancock   Boston UK

164TS
164Super
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