Fiat Top Manager is killing Lancia !!!!! IMPORTANT !

[Pierluigi]

The famous Italian Magazine "Il Sole 24 ore" , in its 17th of January 2002 edition, contains an awful interview to Mr. Cantarella, the Top Manager of the Fiat Group. One of the question asks : " Why you're going to create a separated unit for Alfa Romeo but for Lancia nothing similar ha been planned and it will remain joined to Fiat ? Do you think Lancia no more strategic ?"

Cantarella's answer has been terrible and sounds like follows : " Because Alfa Romeo in the last 10 years duplicated its turnover and in the meantime it's recognised as a glorious Name all over the world ; in fact we will go back to USA with Alfa . Lancia's last decade has been opposite and now its name has customers and fame only in few zones of the South of Europe. With so poor market it makes no sense to separate it form Fiat name and sale's system"

The rest of the Interview is full of congratulations for last Alfa models, 156-147, and generally for Alfa's sport tradition . This Message is , for us Lancisti, very clear and shows the next Lancia's death .

Please, let's send this message to all Lancisti we know.

[Alan Cooper]

fiat do not seem to know what they have it is true that Lancia is not understood by the wider public but it has a very strong following from enthusiasts all over the world they should use this for their advantage to help reinvent the brand, the decline in lancia sales can be seen as a direct result of policies within fiat that appear to favor alfa romeo and also stop lancia from building cars in the medium size bracket (delta/147) presumably to stop in house competion but if that is the case why have a abarth version of the Stilo? VW seem well aware that it is possible to have two similar but slightly different brands with Audi and Seat I fail to see why alfa /lancia is any different where for instance is the 5 cylinder turbo lybra they could certainly make one and it would have the same discrete appeal that is the aura of many lancias it would therefore not compete directly with the more agressive alfas . I personally own a delta hpe hf turbo which is a fantastic car but sold badly even in Italy because as far as I can see no effort was made to promote it but it is a far nicer car than the then equivalent alfa 145... as I live in England I had to import it from the netherlands and put up with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

[Pierluigi]

Let's hope in a new buyer. Bmw or Mercedes .

[Alan Cooper]

I think that Lancia needs to remain in Italian hands or the true soul of the marque will be crushed I am sure there is still a lot of passion for the brand and I saw that there is still enthusiasm within fiat somewhere when I visited the Lancia collection recently there are very few manufacturers that would take the time to show two enthusiasts around their collection indeed as the collection is not open to the public I believe that most would not agree to it at all. What is needed is for the people at the very top to adopt a positive strategy towards Lancia and with Thesis and Lybra the basis is there it just needs to be given that extra edge. My biggest concern is that once the current priviledges enjoyed by car dealers in europe are removed by the EC that Lancia will suffer because in the possible new selling environments no one will think to look for or to buy a Lancia it seems that it is often only the choice of people who stumble across it by accident or Italians few others are aware of it.

[Pierluigi e Filippo]

Our opinion, as real lovers of a this unfortunately died Company , is :



Mr. Cantarella over-passed every limit because he knows too well that the actual Lancia' s poor sales are due to his person and his staff who leaded the Group exactly in the last decade . Cantarella is the man who introduced the last Lancia models, all so ugly to determinate the sale's failure he now tells !

No new Sport cars , neither Granturismo . And Sport, Rallies and Granturismo is the base of Lancia Tradition . Lancia doesn't means only Big Sedan . By the way it's not only a tradition problem but young people need sport-full cars. These Managers destroyed in less than ten years the Fame and the respect that Lancia built in the previous 85 years . It doesn't need to go back to Lambda, Aprilia, or Fulvia but you have just to go to the end of the 80's / beginning of the 90's when Thema and Delta Integrale were leaders as performance and appeal .

Personally is more true to think that after the wonderful Gamma Coupé by Pininfarina, with its rare alloy boxer engine, we had to wait for 15 years before to see a horrible and impersonal Kappa Sedan with only two doors. And we know that the Bertone's proposal (called "Kayak") was better and better .

Day after day all Lancia Dealer in Europe are going to close, as far as in Italy .

The first period of Lancia under Fiat was not so bad but when, in the 1987, Fiat bought Alfa Romeo Lancia' s slow death started. Now GM bought a big part of Fiat , mainly to have a Sport Name using the Alfa one . In fact Alfa will soon return in the USA market but nobody spoke so clearly about Lancia' destiny before this Cantarella's interview .

That's the reason why we think that the only way to save what we love is that Fiat/GM sell Lancia . It means more resources on the Alfa renaissance, on the popular Fiat cars and on the IVECO trucks . Bit it means also to give a surviving chance to Lancia.

Who could buy it ? We hope in Mercedes, which could need such historical and sport Name as Lancia is to make quality cars a little bit cheaper than Mercedes and to use it in competition like rallies.

We hope in Mr. Pieche/VW who like the V4-V6 engines as Fulvia has been .

We hope in BMW which could replace the bad experience of Rover with this more appreciated Italian Company .

P.S. for Mr. Cantarella about sport cars : in the last 30 years f do you remember more Alfa's or more Lancia's victories ? Delta Integrale's was mad by Alfa ? The 037 ? The C-group Montecarlo ? The Stratos, the Fulvia HF ? But all of us remember the great results f ALFA in F1 in the 80's and some victories on the DTM when the other cars were extra-loaded .....

[Huib Geurink]

Let's wait and see.

Look at the figures. Vincenzo managed the company for 31 years from 1906 till 1937.
Gianni ran the company for 18 years from 1937 till 1955.
Pesenti ran the company for 14 years till 1969.
Fiat has now been running Lancia for more than 32 years, longer than any of the others. Is that so bad? It is still going up and down, but that is nothing new.

I bought my first Lancia in 1968 and have bought 8 brand new ones after that. Some rusted so badly I could put my fist through holes in the fender within a year. Some had engines blowing up. But when they ran, the ran beautifully. So, I did stick with "my Lancia" and still am, for better and for worse.

Anyway, we have heard "finito" a few times. I believe in the strength of the name Lancia. So will our friends in Torino.

P.S.
When I was driving my 3rd hand Flavia coupe in 1968 I met nice young lady driving a second hand Touring Convertible to work. I arrested both. The young lady is still my wife and she is still a Lancista too.
In 1990 delivery of my new Thema Turbo 16V was 1 year overdue. I was totally frustrated and considered changing to an Alfa 164. Mamma mia. Total turmoil in the family. My wife wasn't sure whether she had to pack her bags too. My son, then 14 years of age, flatly refused to go with me to the Alfa dealer for a test drive. I decided to wait a bit more for the Thema Turbo 16V. Good decision.

[Alan Cooper]

it seems to me that all fiat need to do is let the engineers and designers at lancia do what they want to as opposed to restricting the available market segments and also to stop the apparent restriction on high performance versions as lancias should be discrete BUT also they should be fast.There is NOTHING I can buy in the current range if I was to change cars I do not know if I would buy Alfa Romeo or not; Fiat obviously think I would but they are not quite right for me somehow....I am not sure that we will win whatever happens as there is a strong risk of losing the Italian engines which ever way things go ....an Alfa or Lancia with an Opel engine it is a frightening thought

[Alan Cooper]

the trouble with Italians is that they are very blase about things they think you should simply accept that because they made something it must be good . I remember a tale told to me by a UK dealer about the then current Y10 basically the italians could not understand why more Fila ones were sold than any other the answer of course was that it was because the back door was the same colour as the rest of the car! ....why then asks the dealer couldn't you make them all with matching doors for the UK?....'it is Italian design they should like....' very positive market research!!....not....The biggest fault with many of the 'fiat' designs is not so much the inherent design which in some cases is pretty damn good especially the Beta which I suppose is the most 'lancia' of them but the diabolical dealer network in which so little is invested or importance placed we all know that lancias may well go wrong a little more often but not getting it fixed is the root of all customer disatisfaction whenever there has been a good dealer sales have started to rise and people have come back for more this is usually followed by fiat handing the franchise over to someone else! In the uk fiat are apparently vigorously attacking as many long established dealers as they can and handing the dealerships to large groups locally our fiat/alfa dealer had been established over 20 years but that seemed to matter little. I have little faith in the replacement dealer. As regards pre-fiat/ post-fiat I hate to be snobbish and I do like both but I have to say I regard them sort of as two separate marques the beta and maybe gamma being the only ones with any real influence from the lancia era. I do prefer the lancia era designs but of course some others think I am not right in the head to think so I once told somebody that I would have a fulvia 1.6 hf s1 ahead of an Integrale anyday ...he thought i was crazy!!!

[Ryan]

Before you go stereotyping the entire Italian race... why don't you
just shut off your computer... unless you'd like us to get started
on a few tales of the magnificent British race.. uh huh.

Talk Lancias.. not race there buddy.

[Alan Cooper]

lost this one a bit here what have I got against Italians ? nothing ...I am only making the point that they (ok let's read that as FIAT) can be a little blinkered in some ways it is a good thing in some ways bad . In todays market place more receptiveness to customers is important...the british? well sadly we made the MGB ...enough said