Thursday,
February 01, 2007
Fiat's "Bravo" to Determine it's Future???
The
ANNOTICO Report
Fiat
is putting a lot of faith in the "Bravo", which is merely a
revamped version of the disastrous "Stilo".
Fiat CEO
Sergio Marchionne claims that Stilo's electronics problems have been solved, that Bravo
is offering only one version, has reduced the number of built-in extras, that
has made it more price competitive.
Fiat's
great wheeled hope launched in
Reuters
Motor.com
By Gilles Castonguay
January 31, 2007
Milan, Italy - Fiat will take its first step towards meeting ambitious 2010
growth targets with Wednesday's launch in Rome of a car for the most important
segment of the western European market.
The five-door Bravo will not only mark Fiat's return to the compact-car segment
but also its effort to keep up the momentum gained from its quick recovery from
the brink of collapse.
It will arrive in
Although strong sales of the Grande Punto last year
led its key auto division to its first annual profit since 2000 last year Fiat
has yet to prove sceptics wrong
. Analysts such as
Sanford Bernstein's Nicola Di Palma doubt it can repeat this success in a
segment where it has failed to develop much of a presence in the last six
years.
"It will
be difficult for the Bravo," she said. "A disaster could repeat
itself," she added, referring to the failure of the Bravo's predecessor,the Stilo.
Nevertheless
Fiat, by reporting strong results quarter after quarter last year, has won the
confidence of investors whose renewed demand for its stock nearly doubled its
price in 2006.
Fiat has
confirmed targets set under an ambitious growth strategy for 2007-2010,
including a group trading profit of 2.5-billion to 2.7-billion.
The compact
segment of the market (C segment) is important because automakers make more
money from them than the smaller cars in their line-up
. Sales in this segment have margins of four or
five percent against a loss of one percent to a profit of three percent in the
A and B segments, according to Di Palma.
The A and B
segments comprise the smallest cars on the market, for which the Fiat brand is
best known.
Fiat chief
executive Sergio Marchionne has estimat
ed the C segment to be the biggest part of the
European market about 25 percent of
total sales but Fiat's share has
been paltry. In western Europe it was 15th with 1.6 percent in 2006 - though
that excluded its Lancia and Alfa Romeo brands and was far behind market leaders VW,
GM's Opel and Ford, according to J.D. Power
estimates.
The Bravo is
seen as the key to demonstrating that Fiat has anything approaching a
sustainable future. It's a revamped version of the Stilo
and the first car to have been developed with Marchionne
in charge.
In a bid to
avoid the mistakes made with the Stilo - such as
overly ambitious sales targets - it aims to sell a modest 120 000 units a year
in tandem with Marchionne's view of never
exaggerating the potential success of a new car.
Fiat brand
head Luca De Meo has said the automaker had overcome Stilo's electronics problems and reduced the number of
built-in extras that had priced it out of the segment.
Fiat has also
made only one version of the Bravo compared with the Stilo's
two. It is rolling out the Bravo at a time when few new models or significant
upgrades by Volkswagen or other competitors in the same segment are coming on
the road. – Reuters
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