Next Alfa Romeo SUV to use Jeep Compass base

FCA seems to be playing a familiar song of convenience with plans to base a sub-Stelvio Alfa Romeo crossover on the architecture of the dynamically challenged Jeep Compass.

Flush with cash from the sale of its electronics supplier Magneti Marelli, FCA has announced plans to spend €5 billion in the next three years to fill its Italian plants with new products.

Heavily criticised in Italy for its shrinking market share and moribund product pipeline and by union officials fearful of plant closures, FCA has turned to an old recipe: rebadging and sharing expensive parts.

The new plan, conceived by its late CEO Sergio Marchionne, calls for the Italian plants to be converted from low-margin Fiat models to higher-margin Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Maserati vehicles. Fiat production will be shipped out to FCA’s cheaper eastern European plants.

While it doesn’t sport a name yet, one of the first cars out of the blocks from the new strategy will be a Jeep Compass-based compact crossover to be built at the Pomigliano plant.

While it seems to be a product foisted on Alfa Romeo, rather than one it actually needs as a brand, it will sit beneath the Stelvio, even though it seems to have little chance of being dynamically in the same boat as its big brother.

There is also a Giulia facelift coming for the Cassino plant near Napoli, which also builds the Stelvio.

The only massive Italian push for the Fiat brand will be the introduction of a BEV version of the 500, a plug-in hybrid powertrain for the 500X and a mild-hybrid upgrade for the tiddler Panda.

Jeep production has crept across the Atlantic to FCA’s Melfi plant, with the Compass about to join the Renegade as fully fledged Italian-built American cars.

Maserati, meanwhile, has been the biggest sufferer in FCA’s push for volume, though it may ironically see its sales boosted by a quality offering when it launches a baby SUV, based on the Stelvio and built in the same plant at Cassino, next year.

The Trident’s home plant in Modena will score a new model, most likely the coupe and convertible versions of the two-seat Alfieri sports car, including its dedicated battery-electric variants. Plug-in hybrid versions of the Ghibli, the Quattroporte and the Levante will join the range within two years, all built in Torino.