Autoblog

True True.

↓↑report

Reminds me of the highly-hyped nationwide contest Ben and Jerry's did back in '94 where you could submit an essay of why you wanted to be CEO, and supposedly they would choose one of the entrants to be their new CEO.

After receiving tens of thousands of entries, they instead decided to make a big deal out of hiring their first African-American CEO, who had not even entered the contest. He stepped down the following year.

↓↑report

It is called a benevolent dictatorship. And, as it relates to Alfa, I'm just fine with that.

↓↑report

Bravo! Well said, and don't forget about those electrical gremlins.

↓↑report

The Italian word for rust-colored is "ruggine". Other candidates: "ridiculo" (ridiculous), "ritratto" (withdrawn), "rotto" (broken) or "rovinato" (ruined).

If you want to be more charitable, there's "radicale" (radical), "rapace" (rapacious), "ribelle" (rebel), "rinnegato" (renegade) or "rivale" (rival).

↓↑report

They're going to start selling some Alfas at Maserati dealerships. Unless plans have changed, some of the more affordable cars will be hitting the US by 2010 I think. Dont take my word for it though, things could have changed.

↓↑report

We used to have some Euro cars sold here, but they didn't sell so well. Now that they are making some good ones they are getting a fan base again. I don't think they're really interested in investing in us right now/again, especially with our falling dollar value. Renault used to sell here, and I think Alfa was on too. Not sure though, but there are some people who post here that know.

↓↑report

Because the infrastructure needs to exist to support the cars. That's what killed Renault, Alfa, FIAT et al the last time: the cars weren't as solid as, say, Toyota or Honda, and the parts and service were abysmal.

You can have poor parts availability and do ok if you're reliable (which is how Toyota and Honda were, at the start) and you can have crappy cars but good aftermarket support (Hyundai and Kia, until recently). You can't lack both and expect customers not to hate your guts.

The Germans manage to skirt this partially by virtue of reputation, but also by keeping aftermarket performance _just good enough_ to allow people to be slightly annoyed, but not running for the hills. And, flakey as the German and Scandinavian products are, they've got nothing on the French and Italians.

↓↑report

No not anymore. Alfas were made in Alabama from the 1960s to the late 1980s but they closed up shop when they left the US market.
Their highest production total was 62,000 cars in 1981.

↓↑report