Alfa Romeo Fiat Dealer Abandoned by Employees - The End is Near

I went to go see if I could test drive an Alfa Romeo and discovered a huge dealership completely abandoned by their employees. I walked around the entire dealership and did not see a single person. This is a sign of what’s going to happen across the entire car market. Stel

[dwnrange]

It's not just Alfa, all of Stellantis is going under

[Fabulousprofound]

Self serve? Give yourself a big discount and find the key lockbox

[billymule]

Everyone is attending a sales meeting stressing customer interaction.

[banzai]

The Alfa Romeo show how a bad reputation sticks over the years, the quality and reliability is as good as any car on the road. Nearly all recent reviews show how the customers love their cars, we have a three year old Giulia, great car no problems !

[sgtzsquad]

Well, the dealers got greedy and now it's time to pay the piper. The manufacturers haven't figured it out yet, but their time is coming too.

[kalashnikovbob]

Alfas biggest problem in the states is that most people that don't care about cars couldn't even tell you what an alfa romeo is. They need to actually market cars to Americans to sell cars to Americans.

[papasquat]

Oh Stellantis. It was a short run. I hope the Dodge/Ram brand gets sold back to an American company if it is to survive.

[calr]

This reminds me of the Saab experience. BMW pricing and low sales. The time to buy a Saab was at the end of the model year when BIG discounts were available. I’ve never seen an empty dealership with the doors open! Truly scary.

[martinclapton]

So sad. Don’t believe Alfas are unreliable because that’s not necessarily the case. I’ve had 5 Alfas, loved them from seeing an Alfa Romeo Guilia GTV 105series coupe in Kidderminster (uk) as a young 9 year old boy. (1970) . I drove my Alfa 75 3.0 litre ( they were called Milano in the USA) to South of France and back for family holiday at times doing 100 mph and more, no issues. They never were, and never supposed to be a corporate high sales model, but a car for the more discerning enthusiast, with select specialist dealers . I always felt when FIAT bought them out in 1987 ( don’t get me wrong here, I loved Fiats too), there market gradually changed, to try to appeal to mainstream . However many dealers who took them on, were not old time Alfa enthusiasts and unfortunately didn’t understand them, A noble and fantastic name taken to the masses, hung out to dry, shameful

[jimparsons]

Funny how many here are commenting on something they don't own and haven't driven. They are amazing! I am at almost 86k miles on my Giulia and it's in a class of its own. Just brilliant design and reliability has been great as well. I can't stop driving it and I can't imagine owning anything else!

[tg_ny]

It’s a combination of major issues. The economy is in bad shape. The price of food doubled a couple of years ago, fuel price increases were blamed, but fuel prices did get brought back down, but the price of food remains high.
Health care is a profit taking industry. Greedy, really greedy. Anyway, back to cars.

Stellantis owns Alfa, and is having major financial problems. Some of the brands they own have major reliability and other quality issues. The average price of a new car is $48K. That’s too high, even for the middle class. Stellantis is diluting brands; for example, the new Alfa Romeo Junior is really just a Jeep Compass. Jeep charges $25k for the vehicle, Alfa will charge over $40k for essentially the same vehicle. Luxury items tend to be ignored by the middle class when the economy is poor. The top 1% of population are simply not going to purchase all of those Alfa Romeos. And who wants an Alfa Romeo that’s really just a Jeep. Car makers have price-fixed brands but eliminated their individualism.

Product reliability and fit and finish have gone to crap within the last decade. My one year-old Whirlpool dishwasher has build quality issues, the Whirlpool microwave oven I bought four years ago just died. The Samsung microwave oven I purchased in 1985 still works. My 2018 Honda Accord has body integrity issues. The plastic bumpers pop loose and need to be snapped back in place. The rubber door gaskets pop off. I’ve owned three other Honda Accords in the past any never had these type of design issues. The engine in my BMW 528i self-destructed because BMW uses plastic timing chain guides which, due to thermal cycling, dry out and become brittle. This causes the chain to slip, and on an engine with an interference design, causes it to self-destruct. A new BMW engine costs $12K. This is how corporations are trying to artificially boost sales. Sell crap which falls apart. Even in the luxury segment.

If all your company offers is crap, once people catch on, no one is going to buy it. Consumers will find older products that are reliable and won’t replace them. This is how companies and your economy collapses.

I will give you one more good example of how messed up things have gotten. American automakers decided to import components from Asia to lower manufacturing costs. Do they lower the price of the cars when they lower their manufacturing costs? No, but they lay off people who used to build those components. Anyway, those components are shipped from Asia on wood pallets, made of ash. The wood in these pallets contained the larvae of the Emerald Ash Borer, which hatched out of pallets which were piled up behind those auto manufacturing facilities. Well, that pretty beetle just devoured just about all of the ash trees in the state of New York and continues to spread nationwide. The trees are crashing into roadways and utility lines, and have actually killed some people. I just spent four months full-time cutting down all of the dead ash trees on my property because they posed a safety risk to my family, the structures on my property, and my neighbors. So which auto executives got the bonuses for moving the manufacturing jobs to Asia? And please tell me how all of this is helping the environment.

It’s 3 am. I should be sleeping.

[cheftomsd]

These cars have the resale value of a week old chocolate cake.

[steaksandwiches]

Still love my Giulia quadrifoglio. I have an independent mechanic that is doing all the maintenance. No reason to go back to the dealer. this independent does everything from Ferraris to McLaren so I think I’ll be fine. Six years in and no problems. 40, 000 miles. Although the maintenance is very expensive.

[lawdog]

That’s creepy Bro !!!! Not even management stood around to lock the dealership doors??? There’s more to this story !!!

[billburke]

Son has a Stelvio Volace and it’s a fun car. He passed on BMW for the Alfa Romeo. I’ll shop next generation when it arrives. On Long Island NY these Alfa Romeos sell very well.

[timothyknight]

Remember folks - Alfa Romeo depreciate almost as fast as a Range Rover.

[SteelyDavey]

Alfa's have traditionally been bought by average Joe's who want something stylish and sporty but these new ones put themselves into a different price bracket. They've never shaken off their reputation for iffy build quality.

[cliffm]

Where is this? Looks like everything is open but nobody’s home. Alfa is part of this Stellantis train wreck so that’s never gonna be good. Alfas are a niche product, gorgeous to look at and drive but Americans in general just want reliability and dependability. Agree with you these will be very desirable collector cars esp the Giulia Quad.

[haraldo]

In Northern Ireland, we only have one Fiat/Alfa dealership left!

[paulstanak]

I am Alfista, since 1600, 1750gtv and 2000gtv.almost bought 164, Alfa will never make it in USA and Canada. Way too much money. And it takes special kind of costumer to by Alfa Romeo.