Right but Skoda shares engineering costs with the rest VAG, Citroen with Peugeot (also if personal experience of our ds3 is a yardstick the cars they build are terrible..and they aren't financially in brilliant shape iirc before 2015 they made 5 years of consecutive losses) and Kia/Hyundai share costs and have pushed up market to a point where their cars are identically priced, they also have other businesses to draw money from building ships, making steel e.t.c. They also have ready access to a large home market protected by import duty on foreign cars..
To be fair, Fiat is not Aston Villa.. they are more like Liverpool.. once great, faded a bit.. trying to get back to winning ways. The question is, is Marchione a Rogers or a Klopp..?
Fiat knows a bit aboot platform sharing. The original Tipo actually invented the concept in that completely different cars could be built out of the same platform. This is different to the British Leyland "platform sharing" which previously meant taking a Mini and bolting on a different nose.
Tipo ranged from Tipo, Tempra, Alfa 155, Lancia Dedra, Fiat Coupe, Alfa GTV/Spider, bits of 145 and 146 and even Multipla. Fiat pioneered the technology that allowed different wheel-base, and crucially different width cars to be built on the same production line which sounds like it should be simple but presumably isn't.
VW only managed to reach that same state of progress 15 years later with their MQB... and their execution of it has not been completely successful.. MQB cars are more expensive/not bringing in the profit that VW expected.
Fiat doesn't have a ship-building business but it has Magneti-Marelli, Case New Holland (if you like tractors) a bit of publishing house, a couple of engine manufacturers (FPT and VM Motori) and a football team (Juventus)... so plenty of breadth if not depth..
It now also has Chrysler... including its distribution facilities and experience of the US market.
Tipo 2 is a fall-out of its venture with Tofas (basically Fiat Turkey) .. where they also build the Qubo and Doblo. It's like a "free" car since it was only intended to sell in BRIC type of economies circa £10,000 but someone decided it would help fill the showrooms in Western Europe too. It's not up there with a Golf, Focus or Astra probably in ultimate "quality ingredients" (it wasn't designed for that) but Fiat don't really have anything to lose (Plan B would be to "not" sell it in Europe).
I'm interested to see how it will do. I think there is a market for cars that are just honest, unpretentious and functional... people may just realize they don't need more technology than Apollo 11..
especially if it's good value (Fiat UK - don't be greedy!)
Ralf S.
