Re: Hollands Largest Fiat Dealer Quits

["Tim Hancock" <timhancock@domain.elided>]

There is another way of looking at this in the light of certain trends in the
Motor industry in Europe.

Manufacturers are increasingly trying to control and own distribution
channels. Some years ago we had the court case in the UK involving the Nissan
importer Octav Botnar who did all the hard work in putting Datsun/Nissan on
the UK map. Mr Botnars accounting and tax affairs turned out to be, how shall
I say "imaginative" and Nissan used this as one of the pillars of their case
to close down his franchise and replace it with a Nissan owned one.

Last year Mercedes-Benz gave all UK dealers one years notice of the cessation
of their franchises and announced plans for their own dealer network. The
dealers took M-B to court and the notice period has been extended, but the
trend is inescapable.

Fiat/Alfa have long been unhappy with the overall reputation of their dealers
(Though they have been equally reluctant to accept ANY corporate
responsibility for this state of affairs).I would not be surprised to find out
that this is part of a game plan to own the dealerships themselves or merge
them with GM dealerships at some point. I know that dealers get fed up having
to fix Alfas before they go out to customers when they can get 'fault free'
cars elsewhere, and they then resent being told by FIAT to clean up their act,
control prices more tightly and basically cover up all FIAT'S quality control
shortcomings at their own expense. This case may be simply an "I've had
enough" bust-up, but you never know.


Tim Hancock 164TS Lusso    Boston UK

Re: Location... Location:  Please could digesters in Boston Mass. make it
perfectly clear which continent they are posting from. That twice I've been
five miles down the road to go and look at a car 'forsale' only to
realise...........well you figure it out......(with tongue ever so slightly in
cheek)

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