French Target 15 States To Infiltrate The US Market - Are They Being Lions Or Pussycats?

False premise: "Setting up a dealership network in all 50 US states and throughout Canada is not only expensive, but also not advisable."

There are Chrysler dealers with no product to sell. Cut a deal for co-branding.

Good idea, less risk, lower investment... makes great sense. Let's hope they see the light, always good to see more competition and more choices in cars.

The French aren't smart enough to think like that. I mean they elected a man who is married to his rapist.

Make mine a new Peugeot 508.

Stolen from elsewhere: #Shitroen

70% of the upscale brands are sold in the northeast, Florida or California. A good guideline would be to follow the NFL. Except for Green Bay, every NFL market area could support an upscale auto franchise. On the list submitted, if they are restricting themselves to 15. Dump NH add Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Indeed you are correct.

BUT that was Maserati's strategy and that backfired.

The Qporte was new but not available readily.

The Ghibli was new but not available readily despite adding more dealers.

When sales remained cold and the buzz of the Ghibli wore off THEN more dealerships were added

Alfa-Romeo has been equally botched.

Both have increased sales of their respective brands, but NOT at the volume that would create a groundswell of momentum.

The obvious way to have done it would to have performed exorcisms on Chrysler dealers and install the Italians there along with Jeep to house FCA's premium and premium-ish brands.

Chrysler needs to euthanized anyway.

I honestly think Peugeot/Citroen have even less of a shot at making it than the Italians, but piggybacking with an established brand would work is anything would.

Again you don’t know what you don’t know, that was not Marcchione’s strategy for Maserati or Alfa. Marcchione moved his Chrysler hatchet man Pete Grady in Maserati North America as President. Goal, open as many Maserati points as possible before the end of Q4 2014. Before that most Maserati dealerships were dualed with Ferrari. Using primarily the Chrysler dealer network the expansion was rapid, any dealer with a decent financial statement was approved. Most had little experience with upscale vehicles yet alone a specialty brand like Maserati. Obviously chasing some form of bonus, in addition to increasing the number of dealers almost 3 fold, Grady also committed to taking more than double the number of cars for the US alone, than Maserati sold worldwide the year before.

Before the start of 2015 Q1 Grady retires at the age of 52.

Actually it was his strategy. Were you there for meetings of prospective new dealers as I was? NOPE.

Didn’t go down to that low of a level.

It most decidedly did. FCA got some of its best performing dealers together to see if they would build stand alone Maserati dealers.

THe obvious Problem is that the Old PSA brands collectively have no - or poor reputations - and Buick still gets the OPELS - I would guess GM has a no compete with THOSE models.

THe problem is that it takes YEARS to establish a basically unknown brand (DS) as being upscale. The cars that they currently sell in Europe will have the same problems - that FORD had trying to shove european cars down the american throats - but they will not be sold by the Ford Dealer network so they have NO chance. It has been decades since Peugeot or Citroen were here - and those were not memorable - but today's buyer will not even remember them - so they are going to have to establish their own identity - and new MIDDLE Luxury cars simply do not sell well in the USA. Even OPEL - while producing for BUICK - was not using its name - so it has been a while since IT was in the USA - and the last time they used the name - it was for ISUZU cars - which were poor at best.

Unless PSA has developed specific models for the American market - I do not see success in trying to come to our market.

Something is up in Italy, Machiavelli could be making a move. Watch for a potential announcement in what could be a very unexpected move.

*popcorn*

The most interesting part is it’s not happening in FCA

Looking like Marcchione maybe out at FCA, Ferrari etc. not returning after surgery.

Marchionne out is a great thing. Let's hope they don't hire DeNysshen LOL

No it’s not, not like this. It appears to be serious health issues. A smooth transition is what is needed through the spin-offs and sale. It may get really ugly, there have got to be a lot of nervous people in Auburn Hills

Marchionne is a bumbling idiot that has squandered resources on one mess of a product after another with product after product having major quality issues at launch.

I predict the new guy will quickly ink a deal with Hyundai-KIa. If not a merger it will be for platforms which the Genesis platform quickly becoming new Maseratis as well as a new Charger and Challenger. I predict that those economies of scale will cause them to ditch the Giorgio platform.

Other Hyundai-Kia platforms will become crossovers for FCA.

Why would anyone in Auburn Hills be nervous? They are probably happy given that being sold off to H-K, or GAC, or Geely would be a massive improvement for them.

Marchionne has been very successful with Jeep by making it a world product. FCA has paid off its debt. Sure he made mistakes-EG trying to make Fiat a stand alone brand in the US with stand alone stores. Taking forever to come to the realization that Alfa cannot be rebadged Fiats. However Alfa's are priced a bit too high. Maserati's use too many FCA corporate parts for the prices they charge. Perhaps the strategy is make FCA look good on paper with a "Gold" brand like Jeep. That does make FCA a value company. Hyundai/Kia would end up swallowing most of the small car, mid car, and luxury platforms from FCA. They then just need to decide which brand survives and which dies.