Alfa were you gone???
Lggevo questo articolo dove racconta la sofferenza che ha dovuto patire quando la casa ha perso interesse seul mercato americano:
Alfa: Were have
you gone?
Recent headlines in Italy : "We have no intention of returning Alfa Romeo to America " president of fiat.
After dealing with Alfa Romeo as an owner and dealer of Alfa Romeo for the past 41 years...I have experienced just about everything possible with Alfa Romeo Spa. In the beginning it was as an owner, racer and with a stroke of pure luck as an Alfa Romeo dealer in 1969. I had purchased a new 1967 Alfa Romeo while in Italy and was living in Buffalo , NY . I then took it into a Fiat dealer for service and found out that that dealership was for sale. My life time dream of being an Italian sports car dealer came true.
I hocked myself up to my eyebrows and bought the place. That is also where I found my good friend and associate Richard Stephens some 35 years ago.
Then it all began. I tried to become the distributor for Alfa Romeo in the United States but that didn't work out. What did work out was BOBCOR became the Autodelta race car and race parts distributor instead. Then Alfa Romeo became their own distributor in 1969 and BOBCOR quickly became a dealer. Soon we were the largest Alfa Romeo center in the United States and 34 years later we still are. Now we are really the only true Alfa Romeo center in the USA .
I give you this background because during all those years of being a dealer I have seen some amazing things take place. Alfa was owned by the Italian government since the end of World War II and $$$$$$$ were never a concern. As a result we got the best engineering money could buy. A modern car company could not have spent as much on engineering as Alfa Romeo did during those years. Slowly the American dealer council (of which I was founder and president of for ten years) got Alfa to start listening to the demands of the American market and their great little cars got better and better. Alfa was finally moving forward.
Then fiat bought Alfa away from the Italian government. After that the world of Alfa Romeo changed so dramatically for all of us true Alfisti. First thing they did was to pull Alfa out of the USA market. Explanation: "We are not going to lose two million dollars a year in the American market like Alfa has been doing for the past twenty years". Now Fiat is floundering financially without a captain or good Fiat to sell and certainly no direction and we Alfa people suffer from all of this. Who suffers... We all do.
Then Fiat jumped at the opportunity to sell under a complicated contract part of their assets to General Motors. Now, most important Fiat wants General Motors who owns 30% of Fiat at this time to take over the whole mess that Fiat is in. Fiat has been selling off its asset/s, hotels, vineyard’s, engineering companies, and power plants just to keep Fiat auto open. Alfa and Ferrari are selling very well and Fiat takes in a good dollar from their sales. Fiat needs that money so Alfa will never be sold off and is the big $$$$$$ attraction in the general motors deal.
If General Motors pull's off this deal...can you imagine going into a Buick dealer to buy an Alfa Romeo? "Hello, I have a 1974 GTV outside and would like to trade her in on a new Alfa". Sales clerk; "What the hell is a GTV?", "What are you talking about?”, "Get out of here".
So you Alfa people...take tender loving care of what you have now because Alfa as we knew her and loved her is..."dead". Even if GMC is the final boss, we will never see what we knew and loved so much....again.
Did you happen to read that fiat closed the independent Alfa Romeo engineering/design department last month? I hate to read my Italian newspaper in the morning for fear of what is next.
Alfa Romeo: "Where have you gone?"
per chi capisce l'inglese ovviamente!!
:OK)
cchibal) 
