The chance for Lancia to survive

[Collins Obuya]

I would reckon that Fiat Auto has been the worst run company in the car business. The people who run the place don't seem to have any initiative whatsoever and don't even have the nouse to copy the strategies that have worked for other companies. Even a company like Nissan with a history vastly less prestigious than Lancia's has realised the way to regain market share by consistently producing capable and increasingly exciting new models. When even they can realise that bland crap doesn't sell (they produced enough of it through the 80s and 90s). Even they are producing niche, image boosting cars like the Z, but Lancia builds bland front drive gutless cars. Why would people buy from a small marque with a patchy reputation when they can buy the same thing from any number of other makers? Although I own a Beta coupe and a rover p6 3500 v8 I recognise that it was during the seventies and eighties when Japanese ways of building reliable consistent cars became popular with the mainstream, and it is only very recently that Alfa has started producing cars honestly viable alternatives in terms of reliability and build quality, and arguably Fiat and Lancia still aren't. I thought that Fiat may have seen some sense with the plans for Fulvia, Stratos and new Delta and Lybra models with the promise of sports versions. Clearly they haven't, and I can think of only one way for Lancia to survive. When this whole Fiat Auto farce finally implodes and GM take full control, hopefully they will see a chance to develop a luxury European brand. By then the ridiculous exercises of rebadging Subarus and Chevies as Saabs should have finid=shed that off as a premium alternative to BMW, so perhaps GM will have another go with the Lancia brand, and hopefully take a completely different tack. Perhaps the link could pave the way for an Italian coupe based on a WRX drivetrain (given some Lancia character of course), which would be something.

[Julian H. Tice]

Interestingly enough, as a Lancia customer (I own two), the car I bought last year was a Subaru Forester XT

[Shant Fabricatorian]

I'd like to believe it Collins Obuya but history is not promising.

GM's track record with non-American brands (and indeed even some of its American ones) is appalling. It does not understand Saab, that is why it has so comprehensively screwed it up. If it can't understand Saab what chance do you think it has of understanding Lancia, which even Fiat can't seem to understand these days?

Anyway, hopefully we won't have to see the indignity of a GM-ised Lancia at all. Fiat are negotiating with GM at the moment to get rid of the compulsory buy-back option for a fee (rumoured to be about a billion euros - at least that's what Fiat wants) and in any case the financial outlook seems to be improving all the time.

I really don't know what's going to happen. In the heirarchy of distribution of resources it runs Fiat, then Alfa, then light commercial vehicles, and only then Lancia. If Fiat starts making a profit soon and re-invests in Lancia, there is still a bit of hope. Not much, but a bit.

[mark tobin]

oh woe betied us if GM ever gets its hands on Lancia. Ok so some of Fiat Auto's decisions have been crazy with regards to Lancia, but GM?? Can you imagine what they'd do! They're currently rebadging the Impreza and call it a Saab 9-2. I'd rather see Lancia killed off as a brand than managed by GM

[Alex]

Please!!! Dont let someone from GM take control over Lancia, remember whatt happened to oldsmobile....

Alex

[Randy Adams]

If Lancia is to be nothing but a badge-engineered purveyor of minivans, pray that it meets the fate of Oldsmobile.

[Phil]

Collins,

you state:

"...and it is only very recently that Alfa has started producing cars honestly viable alternatives in terms of reliability and build quality, and arguably Fiat and Lancia still aren't"

You are wrong: according to Fiat Auto management, the Lancia Lybra is their best product in terms of Build Qulaity and reliability and this bears out also in recent German ADAC statistics where the Lybra is way ahead of the VW Golf; the Swiss weekly Automobile Revue about a month ago ran an article on buying a Lancia Lybra as a used car and practically was begging people to look at them as they are the best built Italian cars at present; I have a 2.0 LX station wagon with nbearly all the extras which is nearly four years old and the only thing that has broken is a heated seat switch for the passenger side...nothing has fallen off, the original battery is still in, not much after 68000km; even a Japanes car would be hard pressed to match that.

I am astonished how many people have been buying mediocre cars like the Volvo S/V40 here in Switzerland...its impressions which count and Lancia has simply not been able to market its cars in the right way.

ciao from Geneva to all and vivia-Lancia
Phil

[ryan]

you are correct, insiders admit alfa has probably the worst built quality of the group (a lot to do with the plants in the south). fiat and lancia are way ahead.

[Jacob]

Alfa are very good in term of build quality and reliabilty these days. Much better than FIATs.
I was impressed with the build quality of the new Ypsilon.

[GWB]

Recently there was an article about Lancia in a german sunday newspaper ("Welt am Sonntag") analysing the general situation of Lancia with a quite good situation in Italy, but a very desparate position in the rest of europe and the obvious difficulty to survive with only two small-scaled cars selling well. But the article ends with a hopeful sentence:
"The semi-automatic transmission in Ypsilon and Musa — in combination with the 1,3-litre multijet diesel (70 HP) and the 1,4-litre engine (95 HP) is called DFN. The abbreviation stands for "dolce far niente" — the sweet doing nothing. No one who gave himself up would talk like this."