Marchionne Kills Lancia
Sergio Marchionne announced a drastic reorganization of Fiat. In a teleconference today, Marchionne announced the end of Lancia among a wide-ranging change of the company’s brand and model strategy.
According to a report in Automobilwoche.de [sub], the changes are:
- Lancia will be terminated.
- Alfa Romeo and Maserati will target the premium segment.
- Fiat will focus on the Fiat 500 and the Panda. In a strategy similar to BMW’s Mini, a number of derivatives will be built. Fiat turns into a small car brand.
- Jeep will broaden its product portfolio and its global reach.
For this and next year, Fiat-Chrysler expects an operative loss of $900 million. Marchionne does not expect a profit before 2015 or 2016, Automobilwoche says.
A Chrysler spokesman told Germany’s Focus Magazin that „the Lancia brand will live on.” Whether Fiat will invest a lot of money into the brand is questionable, the spokesman said. Lancia had been kept on life support with rebadged Chrysler models. The last real new Lancia was the new generation of the Ypsilon compact.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- Varezhka Suzuki Jimny, Toyota Century, and I know it technically just ended production but Honda e.
- CoastieLenn For those that care to read the details of the crash NOT included in this article but published elsewhere- this happened at nearly 10pm when the CRV was stopped in the center lane of travel, lights off, with the driver remaining in the car. Not only is it not known if Blue Cruise was being used, it would have been a nightmare for most alert human drivers to mitigate that driving the 70+mph speed limit on many sections of I-10 in Texas, much less an AV system.
- Jeff This is what I would want: Toyota has now released an affordable truck called the Toyota IMV 0. The newly developed vehicle made in Thailand comes with a rear-wheel drive and a gasoline 2.0-liter inline-four matched to a 5-speed manual transmission. NEW $10,000 Toyota Pickup Has Ford & GM Crapping ... YouTube · Tech Machine 8 minutes, 46 seconds Dec 26, 2023
- Jalop1991 At the same time, let's take these drivers off the road--at least the ones that haven't yet taken themselves off the road.I can guarantee, at no point was this guy or any of the dead Tesla-stans actually driving the car. They were staring at their phones, because, HEY, SELF DRIVING!!
- 3-On-The-Tree To Maintenance Costs His best friend did the union meetings and he said that there wasn’t a lot of negotiating taking place between the union and state because they were happy with how the state was treating them. He said it seemed more like a formality having the union.
Comments
Join the conversation
I remember having a good laugh at the UK Top Gear program devoted to Lancia, a marque which the presenters all loved. This was hard to understand as the various models featured all fell apart or blew up in the usual Top Gear way, as I recall. But I will never forget seeing an Alitalia Stratos HF rally car in the streets of Geneva, Switzerland in 1974, shaking windows as it rolled by.
They should pop out a few Stratos HF street legal models before they go away for good. In that sweet orange color too.