Quality now top priority for Alfa Romeo

Perceptions of poor quality have shadowed Alfa Romeo for three decades, but its new management team has given itself just five years to take the brand to the top of customer satisfaction surveys.

With a switch to a full battery-electric vehicle line-up planned for 2027, Alfa Romeo is racing against time to climb to the top of JD Power and other quality measures.

Alfa insists it will build its last combustion engine by 2027, and the thought of an all-electric Alfa Romeo might have sent shudders through the spines of auto electricians the world over.

But Alfa Romeo’s head of product, Daniel Tiago Guzzafame, insisted the big difference between the Alfa of old and today is that quality, rather than sales or profits, has been pinpointed as the most critical management success indicator.

“The only KPI (key performance indicator) is quality,” Guzzafame said at the Tonale PHEV launch in Italy last week.

“It’s not production volume and it’s not profit, though that helps.

“We want to be JD Power’s number one and we are going in that direction.”

The internal quality revolution began with the Alfa Romeo Tonale, which is built in a completely renewed factory.

But the Tonale is effectively a mechanically similar car to the Jeep Compass and Renegade, so Alfa has every excuse to get it right.

And while Alfa Romeo has played this tune before, this time it insists it’s different, because its very survival depends on it.

“Our measure is quality. We need that much more than the sales to be consistent,” said Guzzafame.

“In the product, we can do it [create a public perception of high quality and durability] in one model.

“But in balance with production, it depends when we can get to the top of the customer satisfaction results, and that can be done in a few years.

“If we are improving but not at the top, then it takes much longer [to change perception].

“People who have supported the brand for many years and many times they have suffered. We will not let that happen anymore.”

Alfa’s quality epiphany comes with the realisation that it needs to be known for something other than its history, especially when it’s pitching itself as a rival to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volvo in an automotive group that already has DS, Maserati and Lancia.

“Alfa Romeo has been around since 1910 as a sporty brand, in a driver-centric way,” Guzzafame explained.

“But sportiness is evolving. What does ‘sportiness’ mean in the future? It will be less individualistic and more connected. More collective.”

This sounds a lot like Alfa Romeo letting itself off the dynamic-handling hook and allowing itself to morph into a straight-up premium brand as the EV wave overtakes it.

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