Alfa Romeo Stelvio: massive investment behind Alfa's first SUV

[Dani ♡]

 

“We have nothing to sell and nothing to oversell,” said Reid Bigland, Alfa Romeo's chief executive last week, before describing the new Giulia saloon as “the first perfect Alfa Romeo”. Haven't we been here before with Alfa Romeo; like some naughty two-year old promising to be good, but forever left sitting on the naughty step? Daniele Bandiera, promised to rebuild the marque when he was appointed Alfa's chief executive in 2002. Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, his replacement appointed in 2004, promised an Alfa revolution so groundshaking “it would be like the Pope changing his religion”. Two years later Roberto Ronchi replaced him. I can't remember exactly what he promised, but his replacement Luca de Meo, appointed in 2008, promised a complete industrial revamp of the company.

“We need a step change in the way we do business,” he said. “If we fix the industrial side, it's almost done.” Then he departed for VW.

Harald Wester, Bigland's predecessor, promised an Alfa production revolution - which involved Fiat’s factory at Monte Cassino becoming an Alfa plant in 2015 to produce the Giulia saloon and now the Stelvio SUV. The factory opened in 1972 to build the Fiat 126. Exactly 73 years ago, this was the site of one of the most ferocious battles of the Second World War where German troops held up the allied advance into Rome for four months, resulting in the deaths of 55,000 Allied troops and 20,000 Germans. At the top of the mountain, near the abbey which was destroyed by allied bombing but rebuilt on the 70th anniversary of the battle, lies a poignant war cemetery containing the bodies of the 1,051 brave Polish soldiers in memoriam. The battle to rebuild the Cassino plant has also extracted a toll of managers and managing directors. The enemy? German again, this time Volkswagen under Ferdinand Piech, who with design director Walter de Silva (formerly of Alfa Romeo) schemed to get their hands on Alfa, with one delicious rumour suggesting that VW had a shadow studio producing concepts and design studies for Alfa Romeos that they would produce come the victorious day.

Yet Sergio Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) boss, at the same time as working his way through a legion of Alfa heads, also stuck to the line: "Alfa is not for sale." Marchionne authorised a rebuild of Cassino as comprehensive as you could wish for - assuming you had the €1.3 billion that FCA has pumped in for work that lasted a year from September 2014. Bigland says: "We didn't refurbish anything, not even the toilets." Fabrizio Curci, head of Alfa Romeo in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, adds: "There were a few walls we kept, but the toilets really are all new. I could never find anywhere to pee in the old factory."

Last week we were the first journalists to visit the factory now renamed as Premium Cassino Plant but unofficially known as 'House Of Giulia'. The statistics are as impressive as they are bewildering: 2 million square metres, 1,400 robots, a staff of 4,300 who will be joined by another 1,800 by 2018. There are 440 suppliers and 11,145 part numbers fitted to the cars, delivered by a fleet of 230 trucks a day. The cars, (Giulia saloon and its Stelvio SUV sister) are built out of forged and hot-stamped steel, aluminium and carbon-fibre, with robots spot- and laser-welding, riveting and glueing, then galvanising and painting, before the staff move in and put them together at potential maximum rate of 1,200 a day. It's all powered by a 3 megawatt solar-generating array up on the hillside and watered by half a million cubic metres of harvested rainwater a year. It's shiny, smells of new paint and each of the six workers per team leader looks bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But does any of this make it a good plant? We don't know and, without access to the highly secretive Harbour Report (an annual productivity study of car factories) comparison data we may never know.

Does it make for a better and more reliable Alfa Romeo? It's a good question, and with the Giulia on the shortlist for this year's European Car of the Year award - announced in early March - and the Stelvio about to be driven in earnest by the press, you'll be finding out in the next few weeks. The point is that Cassino is a statement of FCA's commitment to Alfa Romeo. It's more than just the boastful talk and living in the past that Alfa has previously specialised in. Curci says: "From the inside, the most difficult thing to do has been to build a foundation, and to get there has been bloody hard. You can shuffle things around or you can start from scratch and we chose to start from scratch." Watch | Driving a 1963 Alfa Romeo Guilia TZ

His message seems to be that Alfa Romeos are now made in Italy, engineered in Italy and brand managed in Italy. For the moment nothing is shared, although the Giulia's 'Giorgio' platform will eventually go under other models and it seems likely that the forthcoming smaller, C-segment (family hatchback) car, likely a crossover SUV, will also share its underpinnings across the FCA stables. The aim of building 400,000 Alfas by 2020 remains and while Curci agrees that it's "a tall order" he also says it's possible. Early signs are that the Giulia, which Curci admits was late to launch, is selling reasonably if not spectacularly. It's interesting that no sales numbers are offered by Alfa, always a sign that they aren't as high as hoped. In the next couple of weeks we'll bring you our impressions of the new Stelvio as well as further thoughts on the Giulia. Is it time to consider and Alfa Romeo on your drive? Watch this space.