In early 2021, shortly after the formation of Stellantis, the conglomerate’s CEO said that each of its many brands was being given 10 years to show that they still had a place on the automotive landscape.
An act of grace, giving brands like Chrysler one last shot to make it on the market, or an apocalyptic fire lit under the butts of the CEOs whose companies just aren’t performing well enough, depending on your point of view, the strategy means that Stellantis brands at least have a clear goal for the coming decade.
So we’d like to put you in charge of one of those companies to ask you what you’d do under the circumstances. And we aren’t giving you an easy one. Alfa Romeo has frequently produced exemplary cars, but it’s saddled with the weight of history and the need to produce “soulful” cars in a world that cares more about digital whizzbangery.
Read: Stellantis’ Brands Given 10 Years To Prove They Can Make It Work
Its current CEO, Jean-Philippe Imparato, has given himself two clear goals at the company, though. First, he wants 40 percent of Alfa Romeo’s sales to come from markets outside Europe, whereas they recently stood at just 18 percent.
Second, he wants the brand to go all-electric by 2027. That’s a tight timeline, but it’s a move that’s hard to argue against, given the approaching regulations in Europe, where the brand will continue to sell 60 percent of its vehicles.
Still, Alfa Romeo is losing out on eight or so years of possible internal combustion sales in Europe, as well as countless more in other jurisdictions such as the U.S., and in this thought experiment, you aren’t required to play by Imparato’s rules.
So what would you do? Would you keep the 90-degree V6 alive a few years longer to try to squeeze the last of its performance out of it? Would you scrap it and bully Maserati’s CEO into lending the Nettuno V6 instead?
Or would you do like Imparato, scrap internal combustion engines altogether, and go all in on EVs? If so, what products would you keep alive, and what would you add to the lineup to make the company more attractive to your Stellantis overlords when the bell tolls for brands in 2031? Let us know in the comments below.
