Alfa and Maserati: Two Italian Legends Pushed into a Marriage of Necessity

When it comes to car brands that make hearts beat faster and compel even the most peaceful driver to press the gas pedal in the middle of the motorway, Alfa Romeo and Maserati are the names that do just that. But right now, they are facing bitter times. Not just struggling, but on the verge of vanishing altogether.

To survive, they are being forced to sit at the same table, pick up pencils and sketch themselves a new life. Their rescue plan is not a simple resuscitation but rather a total transformation, one that discards the old and hopes to conjure something new through shared technology and a unified strategy.

Behind all this stands a man named Santo Ficili, head of both marques, who spoke quite frankly to journalists from Australia and Asia: the search for symbiosis must begin. This does not yet mean an official merger, but it does mean cars will be built on the same platforms, the same systems will be used and there will likely be a steady stream of activity between each other’s factories.

Ficili emphasised that joint product development is one of the load-bearing pillars of this plan. This is not some vague promise but a concrete course of action, which on June 23 will take on its official form. But the worries do not end there. The entire organisational structure and the full dealer network must also be rebuilt.

The current sales figures are brutal. Maserati’s sales fell by half last year. Alfa Romeo ended the year with a drop of nearly twenty percent. For comparison: Alfa now sells half as many cars as it did in 2018.

And as the final cherry on top, there is the American customs mess. Trump’s import tariffs hit these two brands especially hard: about a third of Maserati’s sales and 15 percent of Alfa Romeo’s come from America.