As the Italian marque Alfa Romeo prepares to return to the North American market after more than a decade's absence, the company is wisely contemplating ways to transition its range of mostly front-wheel-drive cars to rear-wheel-drive, believing the layout will allow it to be more competitive here with its intended rivals, including cars from BMW and Infiniti. But for a specialty brand with Alfa's relatively modest sales expectations, embarking on a multi-billion-dollar platform-development project just isn't going to happen. So the company is considering a sharing deal with a major automaker. After fruitless discussions with Mercedes-Benz on the subject of platform-sharing, Alfa is reportedly eyeing GM's first-generation Sigma architecture, which underpins Cadillac's 2003-07 CTS (the 2008 CTS uses a revised version of the platform dubbed "Sigma II"), as well as its SRX crossover vehicle and STS flagship sedan (the '08 STS-V is pictured here). The plan is to reinvent every Alfa model above the 147 hatchback in rear-wheel-drive, including the Spider (pictured above right), the Brera coupe, the BMW 3-series-sized 159 sedan, and the forthcoming 169 flagship model. The $226,000 8C Competizione coupe, of which 500 will be built during 2008 and 2009 (99 of those are U.S.-bound, and long-since sold out) rides on a modified version of the Maserati Quattroporte/GranTurismo platform. It's the first rear-drive Alfa since the 75 (sold in North America as the Milano) disappeared after the 1992 model year.
Source: Motor Authority
Photos courtesy of Cadillac and Alfa Romeo.
