Stellantis Seeks McKinsey’s Help for Alfa Romeo and Maserati

I’ll give the two brands some free advice.
Speed up the refresh, replace time on aging vehicles.
Don’t announce replacements until they are fully ready for release for sale.
Build on the appeal of Italian luxury such as generated by Gucci, Prada, Ferrari and such. Italian sells.
Improve build quality.
Set realistic goals and target demographic areas that will support Italian brands.
Vastly improve customer experiences with the brands. Provide ongoing perks associated with ownership.
Example, my area Long Island New York. Upscale, hip and heavily ethnic. These two brands started well, built a strong sales momentum as luxury import alternatives. The brands aged, became stale, and people lost interest. Wyoming might not be a sweet spot for these brands, but New York, Florida, California etc sure do and these markets must be heavily exploited to sustain the brands. The luxury brand alternative, Italian prestige and ownership perks will sell in these markets with fresh product.
Free advice might be worthless, but maybe not.

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My two cents.

Kill the Dodge Hornet, it just confuses things and the Tonale can survive without it. Stellantis doesn't sell that many Alfa Romeo and Maserati vehicles in our market. Ship them as knock downs. Build the engines here to the Italian specifications. The GME 2 liter is the Global Medium Engine after all. This should help avoid the tariffs. I'm sure the ZF facility in Grey Court, SC could provide some transmissions as well. Kill the Junior. It cheapens the brand. I'm not against small cars, but there is nothing Itallian about that car.

I don't know what to say about Maserati. Unless the Italian government can come with a deal for importing vehicles the brand might be priced too high for our market.

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My two cents.

Kill the Dodge Hornet, it just confuses things and the Tonale can survive without it. Stellantis doesn't sell that many Alfa Romeo and Maserati vehicles in our market. Ship them as knock downs. Build the engines here to the Italian specifications. The GME 2 liter is the Global Medium Engine after all. This should help avoid the tariffs. I'm sure the ZF facility in Grey Court, SC could provide some transmissions as well. Kill the Junior. It cheapens the brand. I'm not against small cars, but there is nothing Itallian about that car.

I don't know what to say about Maserati. Unless the Italian government can come with a deal for importing vehicles the brand might be priced too high for our market.

Maserati, just love their cars except the Grecale, which I tested and saw little difference for the extra money from my son’s Alfa Rome Stelvio. These two brands do not have the brand range, the dealership network or the visibility to go neck to neck with the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Audi. They must set reasonable sales goals and expectations and concentrate on their viable markets. I alluded to the success of these two brands in the Long Island market where Alfa Romeos are all over the place and Maserati, until the last couple of years, sold well especially the Ghibli in this marketplace.Not Mercedes numbers, but a robust following among the upscale crowd. When traveling outside the metro area I make mental notice of the stark differences in the vehicle mix. Pickup trucks and Toyota’s dominate and those Alfa and Maserati’s are rare. That makes me understand your comments.
Accept the market for Italian cars as it is and where it is and exploit the viable ones like crazy. We have two Ferrari/ Maserati dealerships within a few miles here, and a large affluent Italian-American population, its the right area where you can see a couple of Ferraris every day and that is enough to keep things going and profitable. Exclusive too.

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Maserati, just love their cars except the Grecale, which I tested and saw little difference for the extra money from my son’s Alfa Rome Stelvio. These two brands do not have the brand range, the dealership network or the visibility to go neck to neck with the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Audi. They must set reasonable sales goals and expectations and concentrate on their viable markets. I alluded to the success of these two brands in the Long Island market where Alfa Romeos are all over the place and Maserati, until the last couple of years, sold well especially the Ghibli in this marketplace.Not Mercedes numbers, but a robust following among the upscale crowd. When traveling outside the metro area I make mental notice of the stark differences in the vehicle mix. Pickup trucks and Toyota’s dominate and those Alfa and Maserati’s are rare. That makes me understand your comments.
Accept the market for Italian cars as it is and where it is and exploit the viable ones like crazy. We have two Ferrari/ Maserati dealerships within a few miles here, and a large affluent Italian-American population, its the right area where you can see a couple of Ferraris every day and that is enough to keep things going and profitable. Exclusive too.

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The problem with Maserati and Alfa really have nothing to do with the product. It’s the network. Marchionne spent too much time in Auburn Hills where they convinced him they could sell 100,000 Maseratis and 400,000 Alfas a year if they were running things. Maserati was operating at 13+% margin without an SUV while in Englewood Cliffs with mostly Ferrari personnel. Marchionne then put Bigland in charge, he moved operations to Auburn Hills, appointed any CDJR dealer with a halfway descent balance sheet as Maserati/Alfa franchises got an SUV and margins dropped to under 3%.

While Auburn Hills may know how to sell Jeeps and Rams, they are out of their realm when the product is upscale as are their dealers. Another issue is they targeted their SUVs to Porsche instead letting that for Alfa. Maserati is more upscale and should have been positioned against Land Rover.

Bit your analysis of Maserati/Alfa being more regional brands is correct. The first thing McKinsey needs to do is purge the dealer network.

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