I wonder if Fiat boss Marchionne really knows, what he is doing...
Obvously his current strategy for growth of FIAT is to conquer the American market -- an ambitious and risky venture, since he is almost doing nothing else besides that, to make FIAT fit for future survival. I don't know if it will work out for FIAT but when your cars have a serious identity problem, it's never a good start to begin with.
Obviously Marchionne has no creative idea, what to do with the traditional brands Lancia and Alfa Romeo. And quite frankly I start to believe, that FIAT never understood Lancia or Alfa at all, since both companies have been completely run down by now: Lancia is now functioning as a vehicle for importing Chryslers under its badge (which won't really work, of that I'm absolutely sure), while Alfa Romeo has been completely neglected.
If you really want to understand, how desperate people at Alfa Romeo are, how much they hate being a part of FIAT, then you only have to look at recent events. Workers, unionists and worker's council have actually begged Volkswagen to buy Alfa Romeo.
I'm not kidding, they really did that. They really said "Please, Mr. Piech! Buy us! We don't want to be part of FIAT anymore, we want to be part of Volkswagen!" If you know the pride of Italians towards their car industry, you can tell how desperate they must be.
VW is of course very much interested and probably would buy Alfa Romeo tomorrow -- they already have the first layouts of future Alfas in their drawers. The owner family of FIAT also would like to sell but FIAT CEO Marchionne obviously would rather let Alfa Romeo die, before selling Alfa Romeo to Mr. Piech.
I know that many think Marchionne is a good manager and maybe has saved FIAT from being bankrupt already but it's clear to me, that he has no idea what to make of the traditional brands, that are owned by FIAT.
When I look at the whole picture, including the purchase of Chrysler and what Marchionne is planning (or not planning) to do with the rich heritage under the roof of his company, I can only assume, that he is ambitious but rubbish.