Stellantis Gives Its Alfa Romeo, Lancia And DS Brands One Last Chance

Struggling Stellantis premium brands Alfa Romeo, DS and Lancia have been given a 10-year window by CEO Carlos Tavares to sink-or-swim.

The merged entity of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA, Stellantis controls 14 automotive brands of varying health, and the three premium operations are some of the least healthy.

“We will do what needs to be done to be highly profitable with the right technology,” Tavares told last week’s Financial Times Future of the Car Summit.

“In the past, lots of other car companies were willing to buy Alfa.

In the eyes of those buyers, it has a great value. They are right. It has a great value.”

There are few details on the 10-year plan for 111-year-old Alfa Romeo, but they will definitely involve electrification. Italian citizen and former Peugeot savior Jean-Philippe Imparato has been sent to Turin to punch Alfa back into relevance.

The warning marks a much more stark fate for Alfa Romeo than the succession of five-year plans rolled out by the late FCA boss Sergio Marchionne, all of which ended up either discarded or heavily modified as Alfa missed target after target.

“It will move to the electrification world, but doing that in a dynamic way, with a passionate, successful CEO from Peugeot,” Tavares said.

“Imparato is an Italian citizen and is driving the brand with passion and vision for what needs to be done.”

Alfa Romeo has clearly lost its way, with the proposed eight-model range down now to just the Giulia and the Stelvio, both of which use an expensively engineered architecture that has just been axed by Stellantis.

“We need to improve the way we talk to potential customers,” Tavares insisted.

“There is a disconnect with products, history and who we’re talking to.

“We need to fix the distribution and understand to whom we’re talking and which brand promise we’re talking to them about.

“It will take some time to get it right,” he warned.

A decade is about one and a half full life cycles for most car models, or a short development program and a life cycle, but not at Alfa Romeo.

Already into its sixth year, the Giulia has never topped 25,000 sales a year in Europe, or 10,000 a year in the US.

Maserati appears safe in the Stellantis group as the clear premium/luxury badge and it is already deep into development of its next family of EVs.

That leaves Alfa Romeo bundled up with DS – a brand only invented in 2009 to leverage the famed Citroen DS model) and the once-glorious Lancia as the brands in Stellantis probation.

Lancia now sells just one car, the Ypsilon, which is based on obsolete chassis and powertrain technology, and even then it is only sold in Italy. It is a far cry from the days when it ruled the World Rally Championship with such fearsome models as the Stratos, the 037 Rallye, the Delta S4 and the Delta Integrale.

“My clear management stance is that we give a chance to each of our brands, under the leadership of a strong CEO, to define their vision, build a roadmap and make sure they use the valuable assets of Stellantis to make their business case fly,” Tavares explained.

“We’re giving each a chance, giving each a time window of 10 years and giving funding for 10 years to do a core model strategy.

“The CEOs need to be clear in brand promise, customers, targets and brand communications.

“If they succeed, great. Each brand is given the chance to do something different and appeal to customers.”

Instead, it will use Imparato’s choice of four Stellantis architectures, all of which can accommodate EV power.

Imparato has already delayed the Alfa Romeo Tonale crossover due to poor hybrid performance.