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Italian American
Twelve years ago, Alfa ceased exports to the US. Now it's planning a comeback, with the Spider in the leading role
As first dates go, this one wasn't working out very well. Due to some of the worst traffic I've ever bashed a steering wheel in frustration over, I was late. Very late.
I was supposed to be meeting a gorgeous Italian model in San Diego hours ago but, due to the entire population of Southern California trying to get there at the same time, I was still way north of there in solid nose-to-tail automotive sludge and it was getting dark. Oh God, I'm going to be sooo late...
Running out of people to curse, I turned my attention to why exactly I was here on the clogged I-5 on a Friday night instead of surfing the strip in LA.
Alfa Romeo, that's why. Twelve years after it fled from the world's largest car market due to sinking sales and a product line-up that had as much local appeal as someone else's half-eaten apple, the company has decided that it's going to have another crack at getting its cars onto Uncle Sam's road.
I was on my way to drive the new Spider and ask a few of the locals if they think it's something they could fall in love with enough to buy.
'With most car-makers trying grab a slice of the American pie, competition is ferocious'
I thought several times about turning back, but it's quite an important question to answer, so I carried on. If Alfa can sell the 20,000 cars it expects to every year when it returns to the US in 2009, that'll ensure it keeps on cranking out ever-better cars for all of us, in all countries, to enjoy. So we want this to happen. How it's going to occur is another, much bigger question altogether.
The US car-market might be the largest in the world, but it's also one of the hardest to crack. With almost every one of the world's car-makers trying to muscle in on a slice of the American pie, competition is cut-throat and ferocious.
That's great for customers as it keeps cars cheap, service levels high, and a stream of new models coming their way every year. But it's murderous for the car makers as, if they lose the plot for any product or service reason, they quickly find themselves with tumbleweed not customers in their showrooms.
Think of a nation with the purchasing attitudes of spoilt, rich, easily distracted children and you start to understand what you're dealing with here.
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