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Group COO for EMEA, Alfredo Altavilla, stops by in Dubai to reveal plans going forward

By Shahzad Sheikh

Alfredo Altavilla, the Chief Operating Officer for Fiat Chrysler Europe, Middle East and Africa (right) pictured here with Jack Rodencal, MD of Chrysler Middle East (left)

Alfredo Altavilla, the Chief Operating Officer for Fiat Chrysler Europe, Middle East and Africa reveals he has a big problem. But it’s a happy problem. One that he’s very pleased to have. Production supply that can’t keep up with demand.

He was in town last Thursday and took an hour out of his manic schedule to meet with a few journalists. Though he was really here to metaphorically pat his ME team on the back for a job extremely well done.

How well? A new record of 25,321 sales for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, that’s up 66% over 2011 with a new monthly sales record of 3127 in December 2012.

The Jeep brand alone was up 40%, with Dodge up 58%. The Charger was up 111%, but perhaps more surprisingly the older Challenger was up 144%, perhaps due to more competitive pricing, whilst the Durango jumped 155%. Ram sales were up 94% and Chrysler jumped a magnificent 377%.

‘2012 was a remarkable year for us, both in the Middle East and internationally,’ said Altavilla. ‘Our commitment to world-class processes, quality, advanced technology, stand-out design, cutting edge powertrains and transmissions, along with total capability and safety has paid off, and has been a major factor in our sales achievements.’

The group boasted the fastest growing marques in the region with the Chrysler brands and s hoping to do the same for 2013 with Fiat and Alfa – last year it added Fiat and Alfa dealers in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia alongside Lebanon, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Palestine with new operations in planned for Oman, Jordan and Iraq for this year.

United Motors Company in KSA achieved third place in terms of total 2012 sales worldwide and was up 80%. UAE and Kuwait achieved 51% year on year growth, Oman up 59%, Qatar up 65%, Bahrain 52%, Iraq 70% and Lebanon 83%.

The group has also seen confirmation of a boost in quality and the Ram Truck brand jumped 20 places in the latest JD Power 2013 US Vehicle Dependability Study with 30% few problems reported per 100 vehicles.

So what else did Altavilla tell us during a round-table discussion?

Here’s the highlights:

• ‘This part of the world is one of the most interesting regions and certainly it is one of the very few growing markets of the world, so it deserves a lot of attention from the corporation and I’m here to commit to that.’
• Looking for 33,000 to 35,000 sales in 2013, incorporating Fiat and Alfa Brands
• What was the main message he received from his meeting with the dealers in the region: ‘More cars, they want more cars! It’s a nice problem to have. The success of Jeep, Dodge and Ram is such that we are capacity-constrained. All our plants in the US are running flat-out, if we could get an extra 10,000 Jeep Wranglers, we’d sell them easily. In all our US plants we’re moving to three-shifts pattern, three days a week.’
• However the only places they are considering setting up new production facilities are in emerging countries such as China, Russia and India. The plants in these countries will not be ready for 2013 production, but going forward they might consider importing from there, though this market is US-requirements driven, so it is easier to allocate production from US. Any production plant around the world would have the same standards as we have in Europe and US.

• ‘We have three brands which are truly global – Jeep, Maserati and Alfa Romeo.’
• Big plans for Maserati with the arrival of the Quattroporte and the new Ghibli in June – ‘two sedans which are aimed at competing with the premium brands and we’ve set an ambitious target for Maserati to move from a 6000 unit that it was last year to be a 50,000 premium car volume maker by 2015.

• ‘Alfa Romeo is one of the key pillars for the development of Fiat-Chrysler as a company in the future, we have decided to reposition our luxury brands to compete with the premium brands, primarily the German premium brands.’
• ‘Starting point for a new strategy for Alfa Romeo will be in two weeks time in Geneva with the display of the new 4C, which is Alfa Romeo at its best, it’s light, powerful, has superior road-handling, outstanding performance and breathtaking design, with rear-wheel drive – the essence of Alfa Romeo. The whole chassis is in carbon fibre, there’s no other car at this price built like this.’ First 4Cs for this region will arrive before the end of the year.
• ‘We are planning a very different marketing strategy for that car. We will be offering every 4C buyer a driving course with professional drivers, we’ll be hosting events in some of the famous tracks in Europe and around the world. It is a car you need to experience in a proper environment and the proper environment is the track, amongst other things, the 4C will be the safety car of the Mille Miglia – giving it worldwide coverage.
• The 4C will be followed next year by a saloon to compete with the BMW 5 series with rear-wheel drive. The roll out of future products will then include another smaller sedan and a CUV Crossover. By three years time Alfa will have a much bigger line up.

The new Alfa Romeo Gloria concept is potentially a preview of some of the styling cues that will be adopted by future Alfa saloons

• How is he going to improve the quality of dealers here for Alfa? He recognised that the existing network would have to step up its game and that they would be leveraging the existing Chrysler network to help improve customer service and, without committing on details, he added that: ‘by the time the new Alfa saloon comes into the market at the end of next year, the Alfa Romeo network will probably look different from what it is today – there will be a lot of improvements. As long as our dealers are committed and as long as they are ready to invest to develop our brand, they are welcome, otherwise we’re going to move in a different direction. ‘
• Fiat-Chrysler group achieved 1.5% market share in the region.
• What has lead to their growth throughout the world – production, marketing or Sales and after sales? ‘Product rejuvenation has been main driver for our sales expansion, and the dealer network has been able to keep pace with it, and also the very creative marketing we are doing, especially in the US, has been very important in positioning the brands in customer’s minds.’

• ‘The expansion of Fiat in the region, will be driven by the Fiat 500 family – we have a totally new product strategy for Fiat, as we go forward the Fiat brand will be centred around two key pillars, the Fiat 500 and the Fiat Panda. The Fiat 500 will become a brand within in the brand, so we launched the Fiat 500L a few months ago which has become the second best-selling mini-MPV in Europe, and we’ll soon be introduced in this region. Next year we will start production of the Fiat 500 Crossover in the same plant as we will be manufacturing the new small Jeep SUV.’
• ‘We have a very aggressive plan to expand the reach of the Abarth brand with new products going forward.’

Aggressive plans for the Abarth line for Fiat coming soon