That's almost certainly true. But when those cars have colored American perceptions so much that on a survey of how prestigious a brand is the cars they come dead even when those cars aren't available to test (even behind the company whose most high profile product in the past 20 years has been a gussied up Ford Expedition), they have a lot to make up for whenever Fiat gets around to reintroducing the brand.
I've not got around to checking recently how Alfa is doing in UK reliability and customer satisfaction surveys. In fact, I will now.
Okay, so in the 2014 Auto Express Driver Power survey, the Giulietta is ranked
mid-way out of 150 cars. Which is certainly better than last place. Though the MiTo and the old 159 get a lot closer to the bottom. On the reliability chart the Giulietta is about 2/3 the way down, though that chart seems to suggest that all cars are fairly trouble free these days - the Alfa still gets 90-odd percent from 100. It's not linear either - there's only a 10% drop in the first 100 cars there, but another 10 percent drop in the next 50 (Range Rover at the bottom on there. Arf).
Build quality less good (Alfas near the bottom). Running costs much better. Performance near the top.
To be honest, the stand-outs for me there are the Renault Captur and Peugeot 2008 near the top - Renault and Peugeot both used to join Alfa, Fiat and Citroen at the bottom of these things. The French ones seem to have made big strides recently (consistently above a lot of the German brands) but unfortunately, they still have this perception of being absolute nightmares to run.
Heres the image for the Luxury chart for you lazy folk. Lexus should be number one, buuuuuuuuuuut thats just me.
I'd have thought Lexus would top it too, but Mercedes' brand image is really strong. And to be fair to Merc, the cars are unimaginably better than the dodgy stuff they were churning out in the late 90s and early 2000s.
