The future of Alfa Romeo

[negative creep]

I'm glad Alfa don't do many fleet sales; it cheapens the badge. Look at the Mondeo or Vectra, doesn't matter if they are good cars underneath, they are just so bland and mundane. I think BMW and Mercedes will suffer in the long term, as they've been chasing mass sales. After all, who wants a car with a reputation for being a repmobile, or even worse, a minicab?

[finchy]

[quote=isuk]said loads of good stuff [quote]

Aplogies for late thread resurection, totally agree with ISUK after my own experinces with Alfa.

I'm curious as to what involvement and support FIAT / Alfa provide the franchised dealerships. I got the impression that when things go pear shaped Alfa do not exactly support the dealer & sometimes said dealer is left in the middle.

However maybe my issues were just down to this particular dealer being competely rubbish, they also run other franchsises in the area & some of my colleagues have recived the same levels of very poor service.

Having received no responses from the letters I wrote to Alfa I wonder do they really care about customer service ?
If they addressed this issue ( & reliability) I'm sure they would sell more cars
Anyone know if they have any plans to improve their customer service in the U.K. ?
I hope they get it right, the car market would be a duller place without Alfa

[Wombat Rick]

finchy said:

Anyone know if they have any plans to improve their customer service in the U.K. ?

Yes. They are on with it. The dealers which didn't want to improve have been ousted and new ones are slowly coming on board. Unfortunately at this moment in time the crap dealers have closed before the new ones have appeared so it will take time to get the dealer network right.
Alfa UK also seem more responsive to problems - see financial support for cambelt breakages and so on. My local dealer is one of the new breed and I can't fault them so far.

[sjn2004]

Alfa Romeo sales in Italy were up 16% in 2006. Things aren't that bad its just here in the UK everybody wants to be seen driving a 'german' car so that everybody else knows they are rich and successful.

[MJK 24]

I'm glad that Alfa's aren't all over the roads. Let the people who want to act like sheep continue to buy their Audi's, BMW's and Mercs. An Alfa Romeo is a rare and therefore appreciated site on the roads of the UK and long may it continue!

May I also say that used, they represent amazing vfm!

[isuk]

MJK 24 said:

I'm glad that Alfa's aren't all over the roads. Let the people who want to act like sheep continue to buy their Audi's, BMW's and Mercs. An Alfa Romeo is a rare and therefore appreciated site on the roads of the UK and long may it continue!

May I also say that used, they represent amazing vfm!

You know it's funny how some things never change. This used to be my view on both Alfa and Lancia back in the 80's. Serious depreciation meant they were used car bargains but they still had scary servicing costs when things went wrong, which they almost invariably did. The worst car I ever owned from a reliability point of view was a 3 year old, ex company owned Lancia Prisma 1.6ie that had done less than 30,000 miles when I bought it for less than 20% of it's new price - how's that for scary depreciation. It had already started to rust across the roof (very bizarre) and along the door sills but had not been neglected by its previous owner as the rust was due to poor prepping at the factory. I had it reprsayed and it looked fantastic. Just after that virtually every electrical component started to fail and the mounting repair bills forced me to get shot of it.

The problem with the rarity issue is that at the price points Alfa's are sold at they need to be sold in volume to justify the cost of engineering right hand drive. These are not Ferrari's or Lambo's where high prices allow low volume. If Alfa don't sort their dealer network out properly then they could ultimately face the same fate as Lancia at some point who actually pulled the plug on the UK market just as their cars were getting much better. You can sell in volume though still retain a brand cachet of quality so do not fear increased sales. Both Audi and BMW have done this spectacularly well in the UK from fairly inauspiscious sales volumes 30 years ago and are now regarded as premium brands even though they outsell Ford in key car categories.

Edited by isuk on Saturday 3rd March 13:18

[GhostyDog]

I regularly see GT's (even had a chat with a GT owner while stopped in traffic last week) 147's, loads of 156's some 159's and the odd Brera round where I live. Maybe it's because there is an Alfa dealer about 10 miles away and it's the only one for about 30-40 miles in any direction.

[velocemitch]

There's definatly a bubble of Alfas around the Knaresborough area, which I think relates to the local dealer.