Thursday 9th August 2007

Alfa Romeo To Start Building Cars In China

The most Italian of car-makers plans to enter Chinese market by 2009

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Chinese-built Alfas will be sold in 2009

Alfaholics, you may want to sit down for a minute. Fiat and Chinese car-maker Chery have signed a joint venture agreement for the Italian car-maker to manufacturer 175,000 cars a year in China. The venture is expected to start in 2009 with production consisting of a combination of Fiats, Alfas and Cherys.

Fiat already has joint ventures in China building trucks, buses and components, but these ambitious plans are the first to include Alfa Romeo, the car maker more Italian than prosciutto. Extending Alfa production into China is expected to help Fiat cater for demand when the company launches Alfa Romeo in China and re-launches the brand stateside, both by 2009. 

Chery already builds engines for Fiat (Chinese law requires joint ventures involving foreign partners to locally source some parts of manufacture), and earlier this year signed a deal to build a new Chrysler supermini, for export to America.

Is this Alfa adhering to modern times or just plain sacrilegious? You decide.

Source: FT

[stuartbuckell]

Everything is made in China these days, so why not your car?

However I must say, in my experience, Chinese replicas of things look great, but quality really can suffer.

Either its cheaper materials or the engineering hasn't quite been copied correctly.

[Egbert Nobacon]

Quarity wirr be even clappier than now glasshopper

[sprinter885]

..and the Arfa Romeo Spyder Veroce doesn't have quite the same ring to it ?

[pdV6]

Seems odd at a time when Alfa are trying to persuade the public that the quality of their product is on the up & up.

[torres del paine]

Quality will probably improve. The Chinese are rather good at the manufacturing thing.

[blackwoo]

Oh dear! Alfa don't have the best history with far eastern Joint Ventures.... Alfa Romeo Arna anyone?

[FourWheelDrift]

Won't building cars out of China make them more prone to breaking or have the developed a new super hard porcelain?

[TigerK]

FourWheelDrift said:

Won't building cars out of China make them more prone to breaking or have the developed a new super hard porcelain?

Bu66er! beat me to it....

[errek72]

Chinese market is quite big enough to take that plant's production, me thinks, no need for those 'mongrol' cars to come over here.
It's better this way than to have Alfa go bankrupt, get sold off, and have its name bought by some Chinese conglomerate.

[Goochie]

torres del paine said:

Quality will probably improve. The Chinese are rather good at the manufacturing thing.

Well....... that depends really !

[Gold]

errek72 said:

Chinese market is quite big enough to take that plant's production, me thinks, no need for those 'mongrol' cars to come over here.
It's better this way than to have Alfa go bankrupt, get sold off, and have its name bought by some Chinese conglomerate.

Logical business move by Alfa.

[chickensoup]

Cannot be any worse than the Datsun Cherry thing they did before
Italian reliability / Japonese style

[zagato]

Alfa going to China, Aston going to India, whatever next.


Finally the Lambo & Bentley boys realise how good it is to have a German parent. All of a sudden there's nothing to complain about.

[justyr]

Wouldn't buy one before, even more so now. I refuse to be part of the child labour/plastic dog turd/human and animal rights abuse/environmental neglect Chinese problem
(You can almost hear the Guardian readers rose tinted visors descending en masse - expect the usual howls of BBC induced e-abuse).

You pays your money... You make YOUR choice.

[zagato]

Exactly. Well put.

[peter450]

You might find that hard since everything we buy in the west pretty much originates in a indian/chinese sweatshop

[bri_the_fly]

peter450 said:

You might find that hard since everything we buy in the west pretty much originates in a indian/chinese sweatshop

agreed!

someone sent us a presentation noting the principle differences between india and china - both playing catch up faster than anyone. BUT..india is based on commercial markets/competition like us in the west but paying misery wages. China is totally propped up by the (Red) Government ...so gonna be interesting to see the race develop between this two enormous countries.
Someone else told me if you want to make money in the auto industry now (engineer etc) India is the place to go!

[retrorider]

chinese manufacturing facilities are second to none so i cant see a problem.british leyland couldn't make a good car with a british workforce but nissan and toyota can.funny old world.

[SS HSV]

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[justyr]

peter450 said:

You might find that hard since everything we buy in the west pretty much originates in a indian/chinese sweatshop

You can find decent stuff if you look a bit harder than 'oh, that [plastic dog turd] will do I suppose'. You have to have the mindset that you are not willing to support their abusive regime under any circumstances. I find it makes for very entertaining/satisfying shopping.