Is this the End for Lancia? Maybe?Maybe not.
Earlier this month, Fiat chairman Sergio Marchionne made a simple admission during a standard conference call with business reporters that the Lancia brand was being terminated. It was quickly reported and repeated throughout the world that the iconic Italian nameplate would finally be put out of its misery, its identity as a carmaker long since filtered out as part of the massive Fiat manufacturing empire. ?We must rid ourselves of the illusion that we can build [a] new Lancia,? Marchionne said, according to the German publication Automobilwoche?(German text). Fiat?s recent returns in Europe have been woeful as a result of a tanking European market, and a particularly acute economic crisis in Italy.
Is this the future of Lancia? Re-badged Chryslers are now the bulk of the storied marque?s lineup in Europe. Images courtesy Fiat Sp.A. and Chrysler Corporation.
Alas, to borrow from Miracle Max of The Princess Bride, Lancia is only mostly dead. Motor Trend reported a few days later that a Chrysler spokesman clarified that, going forward, Lancia will sell the Fiat 500-based and Italian Polish-made Ypsilon alongside current, and future, Chrysler-based, North American-made automobiles.
Chrysler?s Sterling Heights, Michigan, assembly plant builds Chrysler 200s, Dodge Avengers and Lancia Flavia convertibles on the same assembly line.
You see, instead of warmed-over designs and platforms from the Fiat and Alfa Romeo lineup, Lancia will continue largely with re-badged Chrysler models, as a good chunk of their lineup already consists of such cars. That?s right, the Chrysler 200, a car that seems to ignite the passions of only cold-hearted, calculator-bearing fleet buyers, is available in Europe as the Lancia Flavia, albeit in convertible guise only. The Chrysler Town & Country minivan gets the Voyager logo and the mighty Chrysler 300 sedan becomes the Thema. There was no word on the Fiat Bravo-based Delta or the Fiat Idea-based Musa, as they were not mentioned by name; but it would seem that the clarification would leave them out of the running in the future.
Innovative and unique cars like the Aprilia defined Lancia for decades before the 1969 Fiat takeover.?
In the U.K. and Ireland, where Lancia was issued an exit visa some years ago, despite the marque?s solid popularity with enthusiasts and collectors, the cars are sold as Chryslers, with the exception being the 200 convertible, which is not made for right-hand-drive markets. Fiat already has plans to expand the small-car 500 lineup to include a five-door wagon and a mini-SUV. It would seem that pushing Alfa Romeo upmarket a bit to compete with Audi and BMW and Maserati down a notch or two to compete more directly with, say, Porsche, would leave little room for Lancia.
Even with the stay of execution offered by the Chrysler products ? which traditional Lancisti must either be laughing at, crying in their chianti or rolling in their graves over, Lancia appears ready to be thrown on the scrapheap by Fiat, the victim of the same sort of ?brand management? justified by corporate doublespeak that has seen once-great nameplates like Pontiac, Plymouth and Oldsmobile bite the dust.
Sporty, fun to drive and economical, the Lancia Fulvia, sold as a coupe from 1965 through 1976, was the last Lancia developed before the Fiat takeover in 1969.?
Why is it that automotive industry people, even talented ones, don?t realize that if you starve a brand of well-made, smartly designed and distinctive products, people will stop buying it? Does the name Mercury ring a bell?
This really should not come as too much of a surprise as Lancia has been the odd man out at Fiat nearly since the day Fiat took over in late 1969, despite a long tradition of very high quality and a litany of automotive firsts. The last ?true? Lancia, designed and engineered before the takeover, was the Fulvia, its components almost jewel-like in their precision. If you ever get the chance to examine the engine internals of a pre-Fiat Lancia, the attention to detail will astound you.
The Lancia Aurelia B24 was one of the most alluring cars to come from Lancia in the 1950s and remains very desirable and valuable to collectors today.
Founded by Vincenzo Lancia in 1906 in Turin, Italy, Lancia were the first to produce a unibody (or monocoque, if you prefer), independent front suspension (via the sliding-pillar setup that included a spring and shock enclosed in a single unit on the front kingpin), the first V-4 engine, the first five-speed transmission in a production car and the first V-6 in a production car.
It is quite possible that Lancia?s emphasis on engineering and quality may have done them in. Brewing up cars with Ferrari-levels of workmanship and selling them at barely more than Fiat prices seems like a recipe for insolvency. Lancia agreed to the Fiat takeover to stave off such a position. For a while, the unique nature of Lancia continued, albeit with more Fiat influence. The outrageous mid-engined Stratos, for example, used the designed-by-Ferrari, but manufactured-by-Fiat, Dino V-6. Despite that model?s world-beating rally victories in the 1970s, Lancia dealers had a hard time selling the street version, even in very limited numbers. The Beta was perhaps the last car that was not pulled from the Fiat bin and given a new badge and it has been gone for almost three decades now.
Handsome Lancia Appia sedan from the late 1950s.
So, while Lancia has been granted a reprieve, perhaps killing off the nameplate is the right thing do, given Fiat?s negligence of the name for more than 40 years now. The world needs more cars like the Aurelia and the Fulvia, but do we really need a re-badged Chrysler 200 wearing a Lancia badge?
Source: http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/11/12/lancia-gets-a-last-minute-reprieve-from-death-row/
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