Alfa’s revival delayed as Giulia debut slips

Alfa Romeo is reportedly pushing back the on-sale date for its crucial new Giulia saloon by between three and six months. The date-shift is being blamed on a need to let the engineers fine-tune some safety systems and tweak the car's ride quality, but many are worries that it marks the beginning of a slippery slope for Alfa.

The Giulia saloon, revealed to the public earlier this year at the Frankfurt motor show, is the cornerstone of what is supposed to be a grand revival for Alfa Romeo. The brand, around which swirls a mist of emotions, part passionate, part disappointed, sold just 70,000 cars last year yet Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) boss Sergio Marchionne says that he wants Alfa to ramp up to 400,000 sales a year by 2018. To help achieve that, the Giulia is supposed to be joined by a larger saloon, two SUVs and a new sports car.

According to Automotive News though, Alfa has now put the launch of the Giulia in Europe back from early to mid-2016, and added further development time to the first of the crucial SUV models. The mid-size Audi Q5 rival will now arrive around nine months later than originally planned, some time in 2017.

Earlier this week, FCA announced that it would be tweaking the targets for Alfa following the softening of the Chinese appetite for high-end European cars off the back of the stock market collapse there earlier this year and the continuing Chinese government encouragement to buy more locally-made cars and fewer luxurious imports. Marchionne said that the basic plan would remain the same and that “Alfa belongs in China” but that more effort would be aimed at gaining sales in Europe and the US.

With the Giulia and SUV now coming late, many analysts, frequent doubters of the Alfa revival plan, are now saying that the whole concept of a new Alfa Romeo is in doubt. Speaking to Automotive News, car industry analyst Max Warburton said that "It's a bit odd to start blaming China for a fundamental change in the plan for Alfa. Maserati was the dry run for Alfa and it has not gone to plan."

Maserati was supposed to have been one of Fiat’s major success stories. Armed with new saloon models, and the promise of the Alfieri sports car and the Levante SUV coming down the track, Maserati was supposed to dramatically expand its sales to take on the higher-end luxury market, allowing Alfa to flourish alongside it (sharing many parts and components) while tackling the executive market.

And it worked, for a while. Maserati sales really did massively expand, but this year they have been hurt hard by slumping demand in the US and China, falling to under 7,000 units worldwide.

It could be that the failure of Maserati is causing more than a bit of panic round Fiat way. With analysts now saying that Alfa will struggle to top 230,000 sales per year, it could be that Marchionne's delaying tactics are merely to give the company a chance to radically re-set its expectations.