Lancia to introduce new Stratos

[Charley]

This is interesting,the possibility of a new Stratos !
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/Lancia-Concepts/233343/

[Will]

They won't even put the Fulvia in production, and they ALREADY built it! It was a nice looking car, too. My guess is they'll build a teaser for Geneva and then f*ck off and bring nothing to market- again. It must be tough to make money when you spend a bundle designing and prototyping a concept car, and all your customers get ready with their checkbooks and then you decide to build more Palios instead.

If they would actually PRODUCE one lousy sportscar and bring it over here, they would HAVE to at least break even. The new Quattroportes are selling like hotcakes in my neighborhood, you can't go to the grocery or out to dinner without seeing two or three of them.

The difference is, Maserati a) made the cars available for sale, and b) maintained a strong brand.

Lancia has let their brand fade to obscurity in this country, and will need to work to breathe life back into it. additionally, I think they need to divorce themselves from FIAT even if it means FIAT shifting them under another umbrella because the way the brand is going to suffer is: "What's that, a Lancia, who makes that?" . "Oh, it's a FIAT" and then the ubiquitous Tony joke follows.

They need a dialog more like: "Lancia, What's that?" , "It's the lower priced line from Ferrari".

FIAT makes decent grocery getters and the Coupe is nice, but brandwise, it's like hanging an anchor around the Lancia nameplate. (IMHO).

[Fingers]

New Fulvia may just be getting the go ahead too. Maybe they're going to come out with a couple of new sports cars??

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/06/06/return-of-lancia-fulvia-gets-green-light-again/

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?AR=233096

[SubGothius]

...the way the brand is going to suffer is: "What's that, a Lancia, who makes that?" . "Oh, it's a FIAT" and then the ubiquitous Tony joke follows.

They need a dialog more like: "Lancia, What's that?" , "It's the lower priced line from Ferrari".

How about:

"Lan-see-uh? Who makes that?"

"It's a 'Lan-sha', made by Lancia. They've only been the Italian Mercedes for, oh, 100 years plus now; where have you been?"

I mean seriously, we don't say Cadillacs are made by Chevy, do we? So why would we ever say Lancias are made by FIAT? We have only ourselves to blame for Lancia's tarnished brand image in that case... well OK, ourselves and FIAT America who, back in the day, made sure the most likely place anyone would recognize seeing the Lancia name was on a huge sign bolted to every local FIAT dealership, inexorably undermining their efforts with guilt-by-association when trying to introduce a near-unknown but higher-class marque into the US... :rolleyes:

At least Honda showed in the '80s that they'd learned from that lesson (despite the fact that Honda had a sterling reputation, at least as reliable economy cars) by forbidding their new Acura line from sharing a dealership with any Hondas, even going so far as to require a certain distance between any Honda dealer and any new Acura dealership. ;)

[Will]

And Toyota did it with Lexus- but both Honda and Toyota had good market penetration already.

My point is that we've seen this sow dressed up for the party a half dozen times, every six months somebody is posting about how FIAT, Lancia, or alfa are coming back to the USA.

Just in the last couple of years, we had the big buzz over the "new" Stratos, which turned out to be merely a design exercise of some folks in the UK, then there was the "new" X-1/9, that turned out to be some kind of in-house FIAT student project, and then there was the "new" 500, and the Abarth version, and then the announcement that Alfa was coming back in 2007, and then the Fulvia, and now the Fulvia again, this time on a different chassis.

And these are just the ones I'm listing off the top of my head, there are surely more rumors and "planned" rollouts out there.

And not one has been brought over here yet and I'm not holding my breath.

[davidb]

I don't see Lancia EVER returning to the states. No dealer network exists.
Most of the old Fiat/Lancia dealer mechanics have retired by now. Back
when they could fill a cargo ship w/Betas, X 1/9s and/or 124s. Now what?
Then a reasonable amt. of common repair parts would need be sent over,
distributed & warehoused. Then you have the ad campaign. "LANCIA IS
BACK !" Will consumers care? The logistics & expense would be enormous.
Lastly what would a new Fulvia cost? Acura or Lexus price range? BMW
three series price range? Would it's performance be comparable? Too pricey
& people will walk in, say nice car, unique car & walk back out. By definition
the phrase "insurmountable obstacles" comes to mind.