This doesn’t look good

[AndyRKett]

Saw this today, which appears to suggest that Sergio Marchionne is considering killing the fiat brand (in Europe at least) he talks about the future consisting of SUVs and doesn’t see a place for fiat, with money being better invested in Jeep, it also suggests no new punto and hints that the tipo might be short lived.

I might not be fiats biggest fan-boi but it would be a shame to see fiat killed of and go the way of Lancia, which is what the story suggests may happen.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/geneva-motor-show/why-boss-fiat-choking-fiat

 

[StevenRB45]

Unfortunately the writing has been on the wall for a while..

The absolute lack of effort on new cars and shrinking ranges of those that did exist was a vicious circle. There's no money because the cars don't sell and there's no profit in mass cars that sell in low numbers..but they won't sell because they wouldn't spend the money to make them a good proposition that people would want to buy.

They could easily have done something like the C3 on the current GP chassis, it's certainly a decent enough base given that the current corsa is reasonably competitive (better than the old psa PFA under the current C3 first seen in 2002 certainly). But it would require a bit of lateral thought to give it a personality of its own to make you over look the creaky underside..that and modern tech.

 

[Eklipze3k]

It sounds like the brnad itself isn't going to be killed, but rather minimised to basically just the 500/x and Panda, essentially meaning that Fiat will be FCA's 'small car' brand. I'm OK with that.
It bugged me that the Grande was classed as a supermini, there was nothing mini about it!
Regardless, Marchionne has spouted so much drivel which hasn't happened over the last decade or so I suspect we're making 'much ado about nothing' here.

 

[chris3234]

Don't see the ducatto going any place either it's probably the most popular van for motorhome converts

 

[AndyRKett]

It sounds like the brnad itself isn't going to be killed, but rather minimised to basically just the 500/x and Panda, essentially meaning that Fiat will be FCA's 'small car' brand. I'm OK with that.

Yes I think that’s pretty much what they are saying, but, They basically ditched Lancia because they didn’t want to have two of their own brands competing with similar cars Lancia made mid range luxury saloons and so did Lancia, so kill off one and save the other.

If the main focus becomes small suvs then they may not develop future fiat 500 models, they may not renew the 500x in future favouring the Jeep models.

Fiat may then end up like Lancia, a one trick pony with only one or two cars which will never be enough to support a dealer network, so dealerships with close, sales drop further and then they are less inclined to keep fiat going.

The shame is if you look at what VW do they make dozens of cars in the same sector and then price them accordingly to the prestige of the brand, Fiat have the perfect opportunity to do the same but they are doing the comple opposite, and killing of parts of the company one by one.

Don't see the ducatto going any place either it's probably the most popular van for motorhome converts

The Ducato is not fiat specific, it’s made by Citroen and Peugeot, Fiat could simply decide to drop the fiat branded model and no one would really bat an eyelid
Fiat already rebrand the Ducat in America as a Dodge Ram promaster, they rebranded all the Lancia models as Chrysler in the uk so its not impossible they could do the same to fiat.