Re: italian-cars-digest V7 #32

[dlou@domain.elided (Dennis Lou)]

>Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 23:06:16 EST
>From: CARIBOULH <CARIBOULH@domain.elided>
>Subject: why Fiat's not here (long)
>
>
>To even do a half-way decent job of advertising a new vehicle launch in the US
>is in the neighborhood of $20 million dollars. And that is for a SINGLE
>vehicle (like Mercedes just did with the M-class sport utility) not a new LINE
>of vehicles! Mercedes expects to sell about 15,000 M-class vehicles for the
>introductory model year. You do the math... it comes to an advertising cost of
>$1333 dollars spent per vehicle sale. Yes, most people do not realize how much
>advertising costs are amortized into the price of a new motor vehicle!
>
>Now remember, $20 mil just launches a single new vehicle, not a full line. So
>how much would Fiat need to spend on advertising alone to re-introduce itself
>to the US with line of a few different types of vehicles? My guess would be
>$60 million on the low side to $100 million to go "first class". AND WE STILL
>HAVEN'T PAID FOR ALL THE "BUSINESS" COSTS I have mentioned above!

Hmmm, I wonder if it would be fair to compare Kia's costs for entering
the U.S. market.  A couple years ago, they started from nothing and
they seem somewhat successful in introducing themselves to the U.S.
market (I consider myself to be a guy who's hip on cars never
imported here like the Nissan GQ Patrol, Opel Vectra, Skodas, etc and
I *still* never heard of Kia until their cute commercials started
airing here).

Perhaps someone could send a case study on Kia to Fiat.

-Dennis