Marchionne's stewardship of Fiat has been a fiasco, particularly for UK customers. The link up with Chrysler has proved disastrous, culminating in the fines and buy backs imposed by the US government. In the UK he has presided over the withdrawal of Lancias from the market, followed by an attempt to rebadge the Lancia Ypsilon as a Chrysler, followed subsequently by withdrawal of Chrysler from the UK.

His attempts with Fiat have been even worse: no Golf equivalent after the withdrawal of the Bravo and nothing in sight either. The Punto is reduced to a minimal range with few engine options. The company has a leading position with the multiair engines but these are hardly deployed in the Punto range. All we are offered is the tiny 500 or its relatives on steroids - some of the ugliest creations ever to come out of the company.

He has just announced that Alfa will in future make rear wheel drive cars. What happens to the Mito and Giuliettas?

I have a lovely nine year old Stilo but replacing it with another Fiat is now out of the question.

Couldn't agree more. All big organisations make occasional bad decisions, but in their product planning the Fiat group have stumbled from one disaster to the next. Their fixation with churning out clumsy 500 spin-offs (although the 500X is an improvement) is a classic example of the lazy pursuit of quick wins rather than a coherent long-term strategy for product development. The failure to replace the Punto is staggering, and not having anything (other than the clumsy 500L) in the crucial mid-range sector is bizarre. Yes, they've always struggled to compete against the Golf/Focus etc, but other manufacturers have stuck at it, and have found a measure of success (eg Seat with the Leon). As the saying goes, you've got to be in it to win it.

I'm sorry but I must disagree. Without the man in the blue sweater I think there would not be Fiat anymore, methinks

-Tazio

Well, time will tell but from where I'm standing it looks like he is taking Fiat and Alfa down the tube. One of the great puzzles in his strategy was the absence of marketing for the Bravo (and the Stilo before it). Compare this with the wall to wall press adverts for the 500 which have been running for ages now. There is also disbelief at the fate of the Grande Punto, which is still the best looking small hatchback on the market. People talk about the Fiesta but its wheels are too small at 14 inches and Fiat easily have the capacity to match it in the engine stakes.

^
Yup, guess will see
However, back in '03 Mamma Fiat was practically broke and was been forced to GM using the put option in their agreement. Enter Mr M..

They still around, with Chrysler onboard.

-Tazio

I do hope a new Golf sized hatchback will be forthcoming from Fiat sometime soon. I simply could not buy a Golf. It is overpriced and made by a company that can't decide whether to use a chain or a belt to drive the cams, has withdrawn a turbo/supercharged engine while it was in series production and has had endless problems with DSG gearboxes. By the way, Honest John in the Daily Telegraph has recently reported that some clutches on sister make Audi can only be expected to last 60,000 miles. No thank you!

jim cooper said:

By the way, Honest John in the Daily Telegraph has recently reported that some clutches on sister make Audi can only be expected to last 60,000 miles. No thank you!

Click to expand...

That's not surprising, given the way in which most of them are driven. It's hard on a clutch when you're concentrating on driving as close as you can to the car in front.

To put things into perspective; Sergio had an opportunity to buy a proportion of Chrysler from the US government and he took it.

This used up more than a few Fiat quids .. It required Fiat to introduce a certain number of new fuel-efficient models as Chryslers, in order to get the rest of the company... and Sergio also bought out the shares owned by one of the car-maker unions.

Any plans he had for Fiat at that time had to be put on ice. Getting hold of Chrysler was a one-time opportunity and it's a no brainer. Europe was in a recession and all of Fiat's sales are in Europe. Introducing a new model into a dwindling market is not a clever strategy, if it means passing up the introduction of new models into the relatively bouyant US market.

Chrysler has posted nearly 5 years of year-on-year increases since 2009.. that is, they have sold more cars, every month, than in the same month of the previous year. At the moment the Chrysler part of Chrysler Fiat is minted.

Meanwhile, Alfa is being re-juvenated. There's a new Giulia on the way and 8 new models on the bench, over the next 3 years. 500X is shared with Jeep Renegade, Chrysler Dart is a Giulietta in disguise and the same platform is stretched to provide the basis for the forthcoming models. That takes time.. but at the moment, FCA has a shed-load of new cars on the way.

Punto is in the doldrums for sure.. but it needs to be replaced properly and FCA's focus has been elsewhere.

Bravo was a good car but again, the Truth is that nobody buys a Fiat in this segment. Everyone buys Golfs and Focus instead. The 500X is a better bet than a Bravo replacement.

Having said that, the sales are huge but the margin is tiny. Sergio reckons a better approach is to not compete Bravo vs Golf or Focus.. but against Skoda, Seat, Hyundai and Kia etc. - that is, less cutting edge modern gadgets and more basic spec' with simpler equipment. Same profit at a lower price point..

They could get more sales that way than competing with a Golf (frankly if Bravo wasn't a success, then nothing ever will be). This way Fiat sells more cars, since they're cheaper.. and makes the same profit on each one since they cost less to make. If you get past the vanity of Fiat not being in the Golf/Focus class.. it makes good sense. Fiat Aegea is what will be offered.

Finally Lancia.. he's taken his eye off this one.. but Lancia is a miniscule brand and can easily be ressurrected in time by one stand-out model, like an MX5/124 spider with a lid on it and Fulvia styling..? If Lancia lost 100% of their sales meanwhile.. that's less than Chrysler sells in a month. Not desperate, if you idnore the vanity of it.

So.. Sergio is doing what he can as quickly as he can.. but you have to give 'em a chance. Once the Alfa revival is under way, the engineers will have more time on their hands, so things might calm down a bit.

Sergio reckons he'll retire in 2017? so obviously that's when he thinks his work will be done.

Ralf S.

Sorry, I'm not convinced by the "all the Fiat/Chrysler engineers are busy doing other things at the moment" argument. You don't see VAG letting its product lines wither and die because they're all concentrating on the latest Audi A4, Golf, Octavia, Leon etc. It's down to poor management that can't tackle more than one problem at a time - and we've all worked for bosses like that, haven't we?

I think that Tazio and Ralf have it right. Sergio walked through the gates of hell to retrieve Fiat and it's looking like he's at least gotten them to the right side of the gates now.

Yes, he took a huge risk with Chrysler and it's paying off. The Jeep issues weren't known at the time and most of the vehicles concerned were designed before Sergio moved into the main office, either by American Motors, Chrysler itself or by Daimler-Chrysler.

New Alfas are in the pipeline after many years of nothing.

The 500X/Renegade looks to be a really good seller. As a matter of fact, the current issue of the French car magazine Auto Plus named them as the best small SUV's on the market at the moment.

The big problem that Fiat has is its poor reputation, more than a little of it being well deserved. They've got the mechanical bits seemingly sorted but there's still a lot to do with the quality of assembly and the quality of the interior materials and some of the electronics. My 2005 Idea was well made, the 100 HP 1.9 JTD was excellent (207 Km/H//128 MPH on the speedo on the autobahn one fine day) but the interior plastics were way to cheap to be in this price class. I had to replace the water pump and the EGR valve misbehaved from time to time but otherwise it was a great little car. What the Fiat brand needs to do in Europe is to become an upmarket Dacia, building superminis, subcompacts and compacts that are great value with decent quality at the lower end of the spectrum. Let Alfa be the upper end and let Lancia go to the dustbin.

My 2011 Qubo has been an excellent car with the 1.3 95 HP engine but not quite as much fun to drive as the Idea. I have had some small electronic issues like the stop and start not working but I recently did a long stretch (nearly three months) of motoring over mostly rural roads at 4.9 and even 4.8 liters per 100 Km, up to 58 MPUKG. A 500 mile motorway trip brought that up to 5.3.

The main reason the Alfa 159 didn't do as wall as expected was to do with the perception that it was a cheaply made car. It was also too heavy. On the other hand the car had best in class style but it takes more than that to make a winner these days. I think they've solved most of Alfa's problems but in doing so have created another one. They will soon no longer have anything to sell in the supermini and compact segments. I don't think I'd ever afford even the cheapest base model Giulia when they arrive.

And yes, the 500L is UGLY!!! And the early ones were underpowered given the weight of the vehicle and everything inside. Maybe they should have stretched the Qubo instead.

Well this is all a hard case to call.

I've bought, owned and serviced Fiats since 1974. Throughout this time (well until for me 2005) my Fiats have been genuine Fiats with no cross country/make collaboration. All in all they were reliable and had my trust and faith in the Fiat make/brand.

Sadly although I loved my Croma 2005 (heavily GM based) this was and has to be the most "unreliable and unsettling" Fiat car I have ever owned. For my Croma 99% of the issues/failures were associated with the GM content/platform. Very very frustrating because whilst I have had very few failures with previous genuine pure Fiat cars this new "hybrid" manufacturing and model production collaboration has seriously damaged the Fiat DNA relationship with one's car.

I'm thinking "is it a true Fiat or is it a hybrid zombie?" and when things go wrong (which they will for any make/model) who do I blame/get upset with/etc.

It is pretty clear/sure that in these days no manufacturer can claim 100% pure DNA in their vehicles. This is pretty much confirmed by the current VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat "emissions cheat" saga is being unravelled.

This all leads to real brand, marketing and loyalty issues for people with any make/brand of car.

The *real downside* is that 90%+ of the car buyers just buy by make name and have little or no real knowledge of what is really in the tin and will swear blindly come what may.

Things will get even more confused in the future.

As for the current Fiat Chrysler Group strategy. I think we can pretty much assume that there is no going back. So much so Fiat / Ferrari have had to sell off the Ferrari business.

I'm just hoping that FCA are now a strong and viable and reliable and profitable concern so that we can once again put faith and trust in our future Fiats / Jeeps and there will be no need to do strange deals (like Fiat did with GM that IMHO broke Fiat in my eyes)

Time will tell!

Still no one has answered the Alfa conundrum. There are supposed to be cars in the pipeline and all are reported to be rear wheel drive. Do you really want a rear wheel drive Alfa? What happens to the Mito and the current Giulietta, both of them FWD? Will they simply be dropped?
The other issue is marketing. In comparison with their competitors the Stilo and Bravo had virtually no marketing campaigns and the Croma was so hidden from the public that most buyers had never heard of it.

^
Yes, I want rwd Alfa Romeo's thank you very much

And while we at it, a few rwd Fiats and Lancias would not hurt either

-Tazio