Ferdinand Piech aseguró ayer que si El grupo Fiat vendiera Alfa Romeo a Volkswagen, las ventas de Alfa Romeo llegarían a 400.000 unidades en cinco años, casi cuatro veces más que las ventas actuales.
Visto en Automotive News. (Fechada por Reuters)
Piech says Alfa sales could quadruple under VW
GENEVA (Reuters) — Volkswagen AG Chairman Ferdinand Piech said Europe’s largest carmaker could nearly quadruple the annual sales of Alfa Romeo, if current owner Fiat S.p.A. sold the underperforming brand.
Within five years, the German company could bring sales of the Italian premium automaker to nearly 400,000 cars, Piech said late on Monday at the premiere of VW Group models ahead of the Geneva auto show’s opening today.
So far though, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has refused to sell Alfa. Last month he told a conference: «As long as I am CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, Mr. Piech will never have Alfa Romeo.»
Marchionne added that Piech should concentrate on fixing Seat, VW’s struggling Spainish subsidiary, which Piech called a foster child in January before adding that the struggling brand is «recovering fast.»
On Monday, Piech reiterated what he said at the Paris auto show last September when he first floated the idea in public of an Alfa takeover: «Volkswagen has time.»
Alfa Romeo may have celebrated its centennial anniversary last year with a 10 percent increase in volumes, but it still only managed to sell about 112,000 cars. The maker of the MiTo and Giuletta has for years tried to boost its sales up to 300,000 only to fail. In a recent interview with Forbes, Marchionne said Alfa was a «money loser» in the seven years since he has been at the company, adding: «I’m not sure if it ever really made any money.»