Fiat Plan low budget brand to rival Dacia

Italian car manufacturing giant Fiat have announced plans to launch a brand new low cost budget brand said to rival Dacia. Sergio Marchionne, the Chief executive of the company said that Fiat were wondering if there was space within the market for a Dacia type low cost brand within the world of Fiat. 

The idea of this new launch would be to gain momentum within the board at Fiat as markets for budget and premium brands are growing, with car sales in between flatlining. Marchionne explained that he would be pushing the upmarket with Fiat, whilst using a sub brand will be a great success with regards to cashing in on the lower cost sector which appears to be booming at the moment in develeoping markets such as India and South America. 

He explained that it needs to be investigated if there is still space below once the Fiat brand has moved up. He explained that this particular venture could see the return of the innocenti, which is a low cost marque which was bought by Fiat in 1990. Marchionne went on to say that to see if such a sub brand is viable lies within the manufacturing outside of Europe. Whilst Fiat's factories across Italy have excess capacities, the costs are far too high to be able to profit from lower price models. 

Dacia, the inexpensive brand from Renault-Nissan has performed so well that the money that is being made has encouraged other manufacturers to get involved themselves, the model has been said to have performed on the balance sheet just like a model from a premium line. These Fiat ideas have supposedly been in the idea box for around give years though worries about profits have kept the launch from going forward, up until now. 

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