Alfa Romeo's plans to take on German luxury kings

Alfa Romeo is confident the new Giulia will change the way people think about its cars.

The Italian brand has earned an unenviable reputation for rust and unreliability in the past. But in launching the new Giulia range the company is confident that it can change that view.

Alfa Romeo Australia CEO Steve Zanlunghi has ruled out a longer warranty for the new model, instead it is confident that it will win over critics with the quality of the Giulia.

"You've got to start with the product and the product has got to stand on its own," Zanlunghi said.

"I think when people - and this is our job to get the product in front of people - when they sit in it, drive it, feel the quality the vehicle is made of and step on the gas, that's what is going to do it."

As part of this latest relaunch, Alfa Romeo Australia has scaled back to 13 dealers around the country in order to improve the image and customer service for the brand.

Zanlunghi said that is a key part of the strategy to rebuild the brand in order to take on the established German players Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

"Can Alfa Romeo be premium? In order to be premium you need a couple of things," he explained. "Number one, you need the product. The product has got to be right, [and] it's got to be a premium experience which is why we prepared our network to where it is."

While Zanlunghi concedes the Italian brand won't be a threat to its German rivals on the sales charts any time soon, he does want to be competitive and start luring buyers away and into the Giulia.

"The aspirations for the car are to compete in the luxury mid-size segment," he said. "We're not looking to take over the world, we have modest sales goals. We've had some pretty good demand to start with and we're looking forward to a successful launch."

He added: "This was not a brand that was born on an assembly line with badge engineering. This is a brand where we knew the heritage, we knew the DNA, we knew what went into it and that's why we took all the engineers and product managers and pulled them off-site and gave them a blank piece of paper and said 'let's build the best product that we can'. And that's what we've got with the Giulia."

Beyond Giulia, Alfa Romeo has plans to launch seven all-new models by 2020 as it rebuilds itself after scaling down to just offering the Giulietta hatch in the last 12 months.

2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio QV.

While Zanlunghi wants to grow the brand, he said Alfa Romeo Australia hasn't yet locked in plans for all the new machines.

"We haven't made a decision yet because we haven't done the business case on all eight models yet," he said.

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