Alfa is Fiat's worst performing brand?!?

[Aghevli]

I found this over at Reuters.com but I find it hard to believe that Alfa performs worse than Lancia overall in any market. Most of the article, however, is on an optimistic note.

Fiat Sees All Five Brands Growing Next Year

BOLOGNA, Italy (Reuters) - Fiat (FIA.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) expects all five of its car brands to increase sales next year thanks to new models and a healthier business, managers said on Thursday.

Alfa Romeo, Fiat's worst performing brand, expects sales to leap by 20 to 30 percent in 2006 as its new sportscar Brera and 159 saloon hit the market, brand manager Antonio Baravalle said.

"From the commercial point of view, 2005 will be a transition, and we'll start harvesting the fruit of our labor next year," Baravalle told reporters at the Bologna Motor Show.

Alfa Romeo, famed for its Spider convertible and distinctive V-shaped grilles, has long been seen as Fiat's most underused asset as an aging line-up lost ground to Mercedes (DCXGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), BMW (BMWG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) and even the new Volkswagen Golf (VOWG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research).

Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne has said that revitalising Alfa Romeo is one of his top priorities, to be achieved partly with new models and by working more closely with Maserati.

Fiat Auto is battling to pull back to profit next year after a sales slump dragged it into crisis in 2001/2002 and is pumping out new models to lure buyers back to the Italian brand.

In September, the new version of Fiat's best-selling Punto went on sale, and brand manager Luca De Meo said it had notched up 60,000 orders so far. Fiat aims to gather 80,000 Punto orders by the end of 2005 and sell 360,000 annually from then on.

De Meo said Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia together had taken their best market share in two years in November while the Fiat badge had put in the best showing in three and a half years.

Industry sources said Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia took 30.1 percent of the Italian market last month, up from 28.5 percent in October. Official data are due out at 1700 GMT.

SMALL BUT BOOMING BRANDS

Lancia has boomed in the past two years thanks to the Ypsilon city car, which has sold 150,000 units since its launch in 2003, and the semi-luxury mini-MPV Musa, which has sold 36,000 units in the last year.

Brand manager Olivier Francois said he expected Lancia to close 2005 with a 6.5 percent rise in Italian sales and a 4.1 percent increase in Europe. He said he wanted better increases next year, when Lancia will push into other European markets.

Maserati expects to sell 5,700 units this year against 4,600 in 2004, thanks to its new Quattroporte saloon, and will grow further next year, brand manager Karl-Heinz Kalbfell said.

Kalbfell, who manages the Maserati-Alfa Romeo partnership, said Fiat still planned to return Alfa Romeo to the U.S. market but that no dates had been fixed.

One of Ferrari's top managers said Fiat's sportiest marque expected to sell more than 5,000 units in 2005, a new record.

[MALDI]

Hint for Fiat's management: You could sell more Alfas if you made them available in the US!

[Hooligan]

Perhaps by "worst-performing" they meant "most under-performing." That article makes it sound as though Fiat, Lancia, Maser are all exceeding sales expectations, but not Alfa. I'm not sure if that's entirely true, however.

Mediocre journalism, however... still good to see Alfa in the news! Hopefully some US papers will pick up that article and get more people interested over here...

[gtv2000]

As I posted the figure in another thread, the 159 has not met expectations during the first month on the market. It may improve, if it's due to slow release of the assembled cars. Anyway, despite such an important new model, so much expected, as the 159, monthly sales figures for Alfa keep way under the 2004 achievement, let alone the results of the 156 when first released.

It's quite easy for Lancia to exceed previous sales, as they had sunk to near zero in the latest years. Fiat is a story of continuous drop in market share.

Beside one's feelings about the 159, or the overall Fiat management, new registration figures are a fact, unless the carmaker provides to fakely register cars at his own name to then sell them as 0km used cars with hard discount. That boosts the figures, but the company earns nothing with that. Fiat played that game with big numbers in the latest years, improvement of profitability being also achieved, with lower volumes, by quiting that policy.

And please remember there's no longer a company called "Alfa Romeo", only a badge Fiat bought the right to use on some of their cars. This has already been discussed in other threads.