Alfa to rebuild – again

Sergio Marchionne is set to announce another plan to rebuild Alfa Romeo. And this time the Fiat Chrysler Group boss will rebuild the troubled Italian marque using rear-wheel drive.

Stuck with just the Giulietta, the aging and unloved MiTo and the upcoming 4C, Alfa’s 2013 sales are likely to fall below 100,000 cars. Thus, in what shapes to be his fourth full rebuild of Alfa in 10 years, Marchionne is touting yet another business plan.

The automotive side of the Fiat business lost €700 million in Europe alone last year, with only Ferrari and Maserati contributing positive returns. That, coupled with the continued decline of Europe’s volume A (sub-light) and B (light) segments, has convinced Marchionne to finally take the Alfa problem seriously and to follow the Maserati lead by taking the brand upmarket and to largely ditch front-wheel drive.

Yet the investment and analyst community gurus are in a disbelieving mood this time around – and who can blame them? Alfa Romeo has lost money in every single one of Marchionne’s nine years at its head.

The current plan ruling Alfa was supposed to deliver 500,000 cars a year by next year, but that target was lowered two years ago to 400,000 cars. It was reduced again last year to “more than 300,000”. In the meantime, one-time fellow prestige also-ran, Audi, will sell more than two million cars this year.

The ‘new’ Alfa turnaround will be based on a new family of rear and all-wheel-drive architectures that will take their inspiration from Maserati’s stunning Ghibli but will be cheaper to engineer, develop and produce.

A long-awaited, much-delayed urban SUV is in the works, too, along with the upcoming small, rear-drive sports car developed in conjunction with Mazda’s next MX-5.

As for the meat of the plan, Marchionne has promised that the five-year strategy will be unveiled in the first half of 2014.

“We continue to work in a pretty determined fashion trying to reshape the Alfa Romeo platform and I think we will be in a position to outline more at the end of the first quarter of 2014,” he told European analysts recently.

Marchionne’s new plan is expected to sweep Alfa Romeo upstream. Instead of its cars sharing Fiat underpinnings, much of the new architecture will be shared by either Chrysler or Dodge (or both).

Although that will give the rear-drive layouts much-needed volume, it may also dilute the purity demanded by the Alfisti. That said, the cars will also share parts and production ideas with Maserati.

There are, however, already concerns around the project being entrusted to Philippe Kreiff, the Frenchman responsible for the odd-handling MiTo. His Quattroporte and Ghibli suspensions also needed reworking by outside consultants.

While the fine details of the new Marchionne plan, developed with Alfa Romeo and Maserati CEO Harald Wester, remains top secret, several product initiatives are expected.

While it isn’t the most pressing need, the first car out of the new plan will be a convertible version of the 4C. While Alfa plans 3500 4C coupes a year, a 4C Spider will add more spark and keep the Alfa name at the forefront of customers’ minds while they wait yet again for new hardware in more mainstream segments.

The 4C Spider is due to arrive at the 2014 Geneva motor show and will share almost everything from the coupe, with the exception of a removable carbon-fibre roof. It will add something less than 50kg to the coupe’s weight figure, so will still be lineball with the hard-top for pace. As its rigidity is rooted around the carbon tub, not the roof, it is expected to handle in a similar vein.

The Geneva show was also supposed to see the launch of the mid-size Giulia sedan, but that car was a front-driver and that plan has been shelved. Instead, it will switch to the new rear/all-wheel drive architecture and won’t see the light of day before late 2015, possibly in time for the Frankfurt motor show.

Another change of heart surrounds a larger Alfa sedan. A spiritual successor to the 166, the sedan was to have been based around the Ghibli, but sources insist Marchionne found the architecture too expensive for an Alfa. Instead, it will sit on a stretched and widened version of the Giulia’s rear/all-wheel drive layout and will arrive at about the same time.

With the locking in of the new architecture, Alfa is also hoping to deliver both a coupe to match the BMW 4 Series and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe. Eventually there will also be a larger coupe to go after the 6 Series.

Sources say the larger coupe could use the underpinnings of the next Maserati GranTurismo, though relying on Maserati platforms didn’t pan out so well for the big Alfa coupe, so don’t bet on it.

About the only upcoming Alfa with a solid delivery date is the roadster, which is based around the next Mazda MX-5.

Alfa insists its car will be a very different machine to the MX-5, even though it will be built by Mazda in Hiroshima. It will arrive in 2015 and will sport unique bodywork and interior, along with a longitudinal development of Fiat Group’s current 1.4-litre MultiAir four-cylinder turbo petrol motor.

Both cars will be lighter than the current MX-5, even though they will have longer wheelbases and both will have greater luggage capacity.

Mazda’s version of the car has already been seen testing on the Nurburgring in a stretched version of the current bodyshell. Given the differences between the cars are largely panels, interiors, engines and handling characteristics, there’s no reason the Alfa version can’t be developed while hiding beneath the same body.

While Alfa could be sitting pretty if it gets its core products right, a major market waits for it in SUVs and crossovers. As Audi, (with the Q3 and Q5), BMW (X1 and X3) and Volkswagen (Tiguan) have proven, premium small SUVs are the thing to have today.

Alfa is planning for both a small SUV, in the Q3/X1 vein, that will sit atop the successor to the Jeep Compass in 2016 and a mid-sizer off the Jeep Cherokee. This Alfa was due to be on sale in less than a year, but now it has been pulled off the Jeep layout to share the Krieff-designed rear/all-wheel drive architecture.

A bigger SUV is still swirling around the planning offices, too. It’s said to be based around the upcoming Maserati Levante SUV (which will debut next year), but again don’t count on it.

That leaves just the two current Alfa volume models, neither of which generate enough volume. The Giulietta has had the mildest of facelifts recently and is due to be fully replaced in 2016, while questions are still being asked about the merits of replacing the MiTo.

Dubbed the “Little Pig” in Italy, sales of the Punto-derived three-door hatch have been disappointing, to the point where the five-door version was killed off and is yet to see the light of day.

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