Mr FIAT - Your #1 source for vintage car parts

Lancia Thesis

Currently reading:
Lancia Thesis

well according to italian press,fiat are losing a lot of money.the profit per car is low.lancia sales are well up[proberly due to poor euro sales of the stilo].the profit per car is significatly higher.now that alfa have gone alone,this leaves a nice gap for lancia.the talk is alfa will have their own showrooms and fiat and lancia will once again be together.i think auto blog and italian speed mentioned it.the timing is perfect.new models are due,making lancia's line up very strong.with sales well up,the time is right to expand.plus with new management in place,they want to break the upper market sales where profit is big.
 
well according to italian press,fiat are losing a lot of money.the profit per car is low.lancia sales are well up[proberly due to poor euro sales of the stilo].the profit per car is significatly higher.now that alfa have gone alone,this leaves a nice gap for lancia.the talk is alfa will have their own showrooms and fiat and lancia will once again be together.i think auto blog and italian speed mentioned it.the timing is perfect.new models are due,making lancia's line up very strong.with sales well up,the time is right to expand.plus with new management in place,they want to break the upper market sales where profit is big.
Click to expand...

I do hope your right,
eusa_pray.gif
I would be the happiest man ever!
 
ah yes there are certainly a fair few of us who'd love to see Lancia return! One thing Lancia must do before they return is have a range of cars that sell well. At present only the Ypsilon & Musa sell in anything like significant numbers, everything else in the range simply doesn't sell.....heres what i mean...Jan-Aug 2005 for Europe....

Ypsilon = 50703 (or 60% of Lancia total sales)
Musa = 24575 (30% of total sales)
Phedra = 4331 (5% of total sales)
Lybra = 3135 (4% of total sales)
Thesis = 1097 (1% of total sales)

In order to get back into RHD markets, especially ones like Uk whos perception & memories of Lancia are woeful Lancia must have a RANGE of cars that can compete. Fingers crossed guys! I'd buy one if they came back to Ireland!
 
oh so lancias aren't even being sold in the uk? that explains why i never read about them anywhere on auto sites etc... how many years have they been gone?

it makes sense though... not a lot of love in the uk for italian cars right now and lancia IS the weakest brand... too bad. i bet they will get better now that alfa's on it's own.

the thesis is a strage car... ether you love it or you hate it... but trust me.. inside it's great!
 
iam told its another lancia that looks better in the flesh.still,better then all the boring euro boxes. :)
 
lire100 said:
oh so lancias aren't even being sold in the uk? that explains why i never read about them anywhere on auto sites etc... how many years have they been gone?QUOTE]

they pulled out in 1994, actually just before the new Y came out which i always thought would have saved them in RHD markets. Problem for Lancia though is that their best selling car of all time, the Beta, also had a reputation for falling apart as soon as moisture came into contact with it. Apparently that reputation isn't actually deserved, and although yes it did suffer from rust, engines weren't falling out of cars as the papers reported!

Its funny you should show a photo of the Musa. This car probably more than any other show the future for Lancia actually looks solid. Although it sells in smaller numbers than the Ypsilon (purely because the market for mini MPVs is smaller than the market for superminis), it sells nearly as well as the Fiat Idea its based on. Now thats significant because in recent years (decades even) that hasn't been the case, and yet heres a Lancia model which probably sells 75-80% of its sales in Italy actually keeping up with the "more popular" Fiat model! COME BACK LANCIA! :D
Click to expand...
 
yep.back in the bad days[?],the cross member on betas used to rot through.the engine mounts would soften,making the engine sit on the crossmember.the result would be the crossmember would snap letting the engine move down even more.but the engines did not fall out.the watchdog programme was the nail in the coffin for lancia.fiat/lancia dealers were offering very generous P/X's to clear betas off the streets.the compound where i worked,was full of them.all in various stages of rot.whenever i walked past,i couldn't look in for getting all emotional! :(
 
The thing about Lancia in the UK is they have a reputation of rusting which to be honest is partly there own doing.

In the 70's Lancia like every other car manufacturer had problems with rust cos I remember as a kid seeing many a rusty Cortina and Viva on the road, as well as rusty Audi 80's and VW's, but what lancia did which in hindsight was a PR disaster is rather than correct rust on recall or just ignore it as many did, they took out press adds to say they knew there was a problem but they were working to fix it. Of course as soon as folk read it they got it in there heads that there cars were going to fall apart, so they tried to get rid of there cars, the values dropped, so people with less money bought them, therefore upkeep was neglected and it was a vicious circle.

When Lancia built the Delta, released in 1979 they did it with a fully galvanised shell and got Saab in to help them construct it to eradicate rust (in Sweden the Delta was called Saab 500 I think) and for its day it had much better protection than most other cars on the road, for every Delta sold in UK there must have been hundreds if not thousands of Cortinas and I can't for the life of me remember the last one I saw one the road, its even hard to remember the last Sierra I saw apart from the battered old Cosworth that smoked its way past me last week.

If you take today as an example, Mercedes have had really really bad problems with rust on cars between 2-5 years old, it's major if you look on any Mercedes forum but Mercedes have been very quiet about it and not quibbled about any work that has to be done and at last count it had cost them something like 20million to correct all the rusty tailgates and doors that they are getting, but you still don't have a perception of them being rusty cars cos they aren't telling everyone about there problems.

The old saying don't air your dirty washing in public comes to mind.

Anyway, I know for a fact you can buy UK approved LHD Ypsilon's as there is a company that is importing them now and I have had the chance to see at close hand how nice a car it is, very well made with a quality of materials used in the interior to shame much bigger and more expensive cars, so hopefully that is the first foothold back in the UK as more cars are made available to the UK public

Aaron.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

N
Lancia y10
Replies
2
Views
1K
varesecrazy
V
V
20 years on, "Lancia" gone again..!!
Replies
12
Views
2K
Ralf S.
Ralf S.
dave
Fiat’s CEO Decided It’s Best To Kill Lancia
Replies
13
Views
2K
fingers99
fingers99
A
Not really a Fiat question more a Lancia/ Alfa one.
Replies
2
Views
1K
raton_laveur
R
F
New Chrysler (Lancia) Delta
2 3
Replies
45
Views
10K
rossocorsa
R
Back
Top