Henry and I attended an Alfa Romeo event at Rockingham last week. You’ll see our impression of some of the cars in roadtest from shortly. But perhaps even more interesting is the positive news surrounding Alfa’s market performance, related to us by recently appointed UK Managing Director, Christopher Nicoll.
You’ll have already seen some hint of the Italian maker’s future plans in our extensive coverage of the Tokyo Motor Show. This includes the exciting new ‘Junior‘ compact (though it won’t be called that), ‘CXover‘ SUV, replacement versions of its existing sportscars, and a new flagship ‘169‘ luxury saloon. Here are some extra details:
- The 169 may seem like folly, given the disappointing performance of the 166, but the company apparently believes a car of this size is essentially if Alfa is to be properly recognised as a premium brand - and for its imminent return to the US. This is pure speculation, but given the 8C Competizione’s Maserati connections we wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit of platform sharing here as well.
- The ‘CXover’ will clearly be getting a catchier name, but the working title is at least descriptive. A crossover SUV, it will be "like the BMW X3 - only smaller, more agile, more efficient" according to Nicoll. Given how good the X3’s road manners are this should make for a stonking device, assuming Alfa can deliver.
- As for the ‘Junior’, we’ll be seeing this launched in the new year. Its arrival in the UK is anticipated to be early 2009, with some dealers getting demo cars before next Christmas. The petrol engines will be all new, and we’re getting some heavy hints about turbocharging - great for efficiency and performance, and hardly a surprise given what we’ve seen from close relation Fiat recently.
Right, back to the market performance. This is interesting. Honest.
For years and years and years now we - meaning the collective motoring press - have been banging on about a) Alfa Romeo’s appalling reliability record, and b) Alfa Romeo’s astonishingly appalling dealer service.
Of the two, b) is the real killer, as a product can suffer reliability issues and still be considered brilliant by the buying public if they’re treated right and love it enough (see the first generation new MINI for details…). There’s usually lots about an Alfa to love, so it’s the dealers that demand scrutiny…
Result? Constant - constant - talk of…yawn…a turnaround, with all sorts of ambitious schemes perpetually on the cusp of achievement.
The difference this time, however, is that the plan seems to be working.
For the first time in several years, Alfa’s UK sales are actually going up. As MD Nicolls wryly points out, it does help having such a low starting figure. But a year-to-date increase in registrations of 30 percent is still something to be proud of - and it gets even more impressive once you learn this has been done with 60 percent fewer dealers.
Yup, that’s right: Alfa has clearly done an awesome job of culling the dead wood from its UK sales network. There are currently just 42 official Alfa dealers. The downside is the associated reduction in official service centres - but if these figures are anything to go by, you probably didn’t want to be taking your car to those other places anyway. Dealer profits are now directly linked to a customer satisfaction index - and that’s got to be helping achieve this dramatic effect.
For example, according to the dealer industry’s own customer satisfaction survey Alfa has gone from a consistent 33rd (out of 34…) place ranking in previous years to a very respectable 10th spot in the latest results.
Residual values are also improving - though the cynical might suggest this has something to do with how rare the cars have become. Even with the reported increase, Alfa has still only sold around 7,500 cars in the UK so far this year.
So, does this mean we’re now completely comfortable with recommending you buy one? Not quite. We’d like to make sure all this isn’t a fluke first, and some of Alfa’s product portfolio still lags woefully behind the opposition in terms of both quality and driver appeal (Spider: we’re looking at you). But there are signs things are definitely improving, and we might soon be able to say yes with our heads as much as our hearts.
Links:
Sizing up its ‘Competizione’ @ Tokyo Motor Show [internal]
MSN Cars Car Reviews [internal]
Rockingham UK
‘…and so I said: Alfa Spider!’ [internal]
Original post by MSN Cars Space
