Paul Jolly: Can historic car brands survive the modern market?

History has a habit of repeating itself and I have concerns for the Stellantis Group.

This is a name some may not be familiar with but believe me, they are global giants in the world of vehicle production. Here
are fourteen brands that they own.

Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia, Abarth, from Italy. Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, from USA. Citroen, Peugeot, DS Automobiles from France. Vauxhall, Opel from UK and Germany.

Most of these had an illustrious independent history from the early 20th Century. Indeed, Alfa Romeo and Maserati were challenging Mercedes and Auto Union for Grand Prix glory before WW2.

Amalgamation brings economies of scale for production at the cost of individual identity. Modern production techniques use the same platform, or running chassis if you will, across a range of mechanically similar cars but with styling tweaks and design changes to create the brand image.

This allows small, medium or large cars, SUVs or luxury 4x4s all to be marketed as different brands but realistically much the same underneath.

Buyers in the 1970s got pretty bored of this with British Leyland offering up no less than six versions of the same 1100/1300 range. Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG and Vanden Plas. Rootes were no better with Hillman Minx, Hunter, Singer Vogue, Sunbeam Rapier and Humber Sceptre all one and the same Arrow series cars.

Toyota, Datsun and Mazda saw right through this and offered smart attractive individual cars with extras as standard that the buyers wanted such as radios, heaters, vinyl roofs etc. Town centre dealerships jumped ship as much for their own survival as anything else and started selling Japanese cars to their existing client base instead of Austin and Morris products.

A steady and relentless march of cheap Chinese EVs is flooding Europe and I can see many regional dealerships looking at doing the same thing as happened fifty years ago.

Badge engineering is a clever ploy but don’t be fooled by the MG logo in showrooms today. The name was bought 20 years ago and is used by SAIC Motor Corp from, you guessed it - China!