2024 Alfa Romeo Tonale Veloce on 2040-cars

Auto blog

FCA's new Heritage HUB showcases 250 rare Fiats, Lancias and Alfa Romeos

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has opened a new facility near Turin, Italy, dedicated to preserving and celebrating the company's Italian brands, as well as the historic cars each has created. It's bigger than the average Costco, and it houses more than 250 pieces of automotive art, some of which have never been publicly displayed. It's called the FCA Heritage HUB. The HUB building is itself a piece of history. FCA restored the old Officina 81 in Via Plava of the historic Mirafiori industrial district on the south side of Turin. At 161,459 sqare feet (the average Costco is 145,000 sq ft), it's a massive open space that allows for both business and pleasure. In the rafters, photos and text tell the timeline of Mirafiori, but the floor focuses on Fiat, Lancia, Abarth, and Alfa Romeo. Although part of the space is dedicated to the "Reloaded by Creators" vintage restoration sales department, the portion we're interested in is shown in the massive gallery above. FCA says it has more than 250 vehicles on display, and some have never been shown. The "central area," which explores cars from 1908 to 2008, is separated into eight themes, each of which has eight cars. The eight areas include Archistars, Concept and Personalized Cars, Eco and Sustainable, Epic Journeys, Records and Races, Small and Safe, Style Marks, and The Rally Era. Some of the cars featured at the new shop include the Lancia Lambda, the Fiat 500 Topolino A, the Fiat 130 Familiar, the Fiat X1/23, the Fiat Ecobasic, the Fiat Campagnola AR 51, the Fiat 1100 E, the Fiat 124S, the Lancia Delta HF Integral Group A, the Fiat S61, the Lancia Alfa Sport, the Lancia D50, the Lancia Beta Montecarlo Turbo, the Lancia LC2, the Lancia Augusta, the Lancia Ardea, the Fiat ESV 1500 and 2000, the Fiat Barchetta, the Lancia Aurelia B20, the Lancia Fulvia HF 1600, and the Lancia Stratos HF. Check out the gallery and below videos to see the full extent of what the HUB has to offer. Featured Gallery FCA Heritage Hub View 47 Photos News Source: FCA Alfa Romeo Fiat Lancia Automotive History Classics FCA fiat chrysler automobiles

Ralph Gilles talks minivans, Millennials, mobility, and kissing Alfa Romeos

We sat down with Ralph Gilles, the global head of design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. The veteran stylist has worked for the company for 25 years, and oversees the design of all of the products in the FCA portfolio – everything from mobility pods to Maseratis. This serves Gilles just fine, as his personal automotive interests are exceedingly diverse. The FCA stand was unusually quiet (until Vice President Joe Biden stopped by at the end of our time there) and Gilles was willing to weigh in on a wide range of subjects. Autoblog: We're seeing all of these autonomous mobility pods like Portal being presented at auto shows like CES or NAIAS, but we're not seeing any adoption of this kind of small vehicle in the market. What's your perspective on our pod-like autonomous future versus our truck-centric present? Ralph Gilles: Obviously I pay attention to the industry as much as your readers and yourself, and everyone has a take on the future. We had a debate, we could have done a supercar or something for pure sex appeal [ apparently that's also in the works], but we chose something practical, to really look at the future in a different perspective. We have these Millennials, a huge swath of people born between 1982 and 2004, and the oldest ones are turning 35 right about now, and a lot of them are having families later in life but when they have them they have a little more buying power, so it makes for an interesting cocktail. The one stipulation we had on the Portal project was that everyone had to be a Millennial to be on the team. So that excluded me, I had more of a coach role on the team. And to your point, the Portal in its current state as you see it is not going to be on the road tomorrow. But there's a lot of ideas, a lot of connectivity ideas, a lot of styling ideas, even lighting and technologies that will absolutely find their way into vehicles in the next few years. AB: Being a Detroiter, all of this attention we've had recently in Vegas, CES – I heard that they're maybe going to be running the show at the same time next year. Do you feel a little protective of the Detroit Show? RG: Yeah, it's something to watch. I hope it's not an aggressive thing on their part, by moving the shows on top of each other. They're both important shows. CES, I've been going to for the last five years, and it's changing. There's a lot more automotive content, but there are a lot more start-ups too, and it's interesting to watch.

Fiat set to invest $12B on new models, stop Euro losses in 3 years

Naturally, you'd expect a massive automaker like Fiat to have an in-depth plan to exit the current European-market doldrums, and you'd expect that plan to include plenty of new vehicles to attract those precious buyers that still remain despite the financial downturn. And you'd be right, though Fiat does seem to have a few unexpected twists up its corporate sleeve.
Perhaps the biggest shocker is a report that Fiat will completely drop the Punto, a car with mass-market appeal aimed at small-car buyers cross-shopping the popular Volkswagen Polo. Its replacement will be a five-door Fiat 500 aimed at upmarket buyers (sounds awfully similar to the 500L) that will be built in Poland. Lower-end customers will reportedly be served by variants of the Fiat Panda.
Borrowing a page from the BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen playbook, reports Automotive News, Fiat is said to have plans to reignite production at its Italian factories by retooling them to build high-end vehicles from Maserati and Alfa Romeo. These will be marketed as premium products, built by skilled Italian workers (who are paid wages that are 75-percent higher than those building Fiats in Poland), and will be sold around the world.