Let’s fireplace up our imaginary time machine and go to the yr 2011 when then-chairman Ferdinand Piëch mentioned Alfa Romeo would flourish beneath Volkswagen’s umbrella by quadrupling gross sales to 400,000 vehicles inside 5 years. The daring assertion was made throughout a gap speech on the Geneva Motor Present a decade in the past, and just some quick weeks later, VW was at it once more.
The German automotive conglomerate instructed a VW-owned Alfa Romeo would obtain Porsche engines, particularly a brand new turbocharged flat-four that went on to debut within the 2016 Boxster and Cayman. Alfa Romeo’s mum or dad firm promptly responded, with a spokesperson telling Autocar: “We shut the door of their [VW’s] faces and now they’re making an attempt to get within the window.”
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The exact same British journal now experiences the VW Group tried to purchase Alfa Romeo as soon as once more in June 2018 to satisfy a long-standing dream the late Piëch had. Despite the fact that the previous VW supremo now not had any affect on the internal workings of the corporate, Autocar experiences VW’s head honcho Herbert Diess “thought-about it his responsibility to comply with via on Piëch’s request.”
Roughly three years in the past, Diess apparently sat down and had a chat with Fiat Chrysler Cars’ then-CEO Mike Manley and requested him whether or not FCA would conform to promote the Alfa Romeo model. As soon as once more, the fabled Italian marque was out of attain for VW as Manley mentioned FCA was not concerned with parting methods with Alfa.
Quick ahead to 2021, Stellantis says each model in its portfolio will profit from investments within the subsequent 10 years. Sure, that features even struggling manufacturers equivalent to Lancia and DS Cars. It additionally successfully means not one of the automakers belonging to the world’s fourth-largest automotive producers are on the market, so VW’s dream of proudly owning Alfa Romeo will not materialize within the foreseeable future, if ever.
The place would Alfa Romeo even slot in VAG’s huge portfolio? Maybe as a extra inexpensive various to Porsche, particularly for the reason that fashions from Zuffenhausen are getting increasingly more costly. On second thought, Alfas would then conflict with the high-performance Audi S and RS fashions. VW is a grasp of efficiently launching the identical automotive beneath totally different manufacturers, so it might most likely discover a solution to squeeze Alfa into the household.
