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.
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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.