Alfa Romeo will be tripling its engineering team within the coming 18 months, making a total of 600 professionals. Their goal would be to develop and launch eight new products between now and 2018, solely built in Italy.
They will be covering all the segments such as C-Segment like the Ford Focus then to E-Segment midsize luxury saloons like BMW 5 Series. All of these products would be offered in rear and all-wheel-drive. The production is planned to start somewhere in the second half of 2015 and by the year 2018, the sales would climb to 400,000 units.
With two compact vehicles, a specialty product, two CUV/SUVs, a midsized saloon, and a full size saloon, Alfa is at set to launch a real product onslaught from 2016 to 2018. Alfa’s boss Harald Wester said that when this new breed will arrive, it will have a number of qualities like 50/50 weight distributions and power-to-weight ratios all complementing Alfa’s trademark styling and design.
All of these vehicles will be using new and advanced Italian-built engines; two will be six-cylinder gas engines, a 300 horsepower diesel engine and other petrol engines will be of 400 to 500 horsepower. The gas engines will most probably be turbocharged four-cylinder churning out 200 to 350 horsepower. If you are more concerned about economy, the best choice for you would be a four-pot oil burner which will be developing 100 to 200 horses.
During his presentation, Wester also said: “Go back to the Alfa Romeo that people admired.” Let’s wait and see if these are just the big words or Alfa do really mean all that?
