Volkswagen wanted to quadruple Alfa Romeo sales, but Italy refused - twice!

Today, Alfa Romeo sells around 60,000 to 70,000 cars a year. A modest figure for a brand with such an immense past, which has long fuelled an almost obsessive question among enthusiasts: what if history had been different? For more than a decade, another giant dreamed of reclaiming the Biscione: Volkswagen Group. And not just once... but at least twice.

Ferdinand Piëch's dream: to turn Alfa into the popular anti-Porsche

In the early 2010s, Volkswagen patriarch Ferdinand Piëch made no secret of his admiration for Alfa Romeo. At car shows, he repeated that the Italian brand could "thrive under the Volkswagen roof". He goes even further: according to him, sales could be multiplied by four in five years.

At the time, Alfa was selling around 100,000 cars a year. Piëch imagined a clear future: an Alfa positioned under Porsche, with German technology but Italian styling. In this scenario, the Milanese sports cars could have received the new four-cylinder turbochargers of the Boxster and Cayman, while the brand would have become a more emotional and accessible alternative to the Zuffenhausen models.

The Italian response was immediate and brutal. At Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the door was shut without discussion. Sergio Marchionne was even quoted as saying that as long as he was in charge, Alfa Romeo would never be sold to Volkswagen. The psychological game is on.

2018: the second attempt

Time passes, Piëch leaves the helm, but his idea continues to haunt Wolfsburg. In 2018, the year of Sergion Marchionne's death, Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess meets new FCA head Mike Manley. According to several concordant sources, Diess considers it his duty to fulfill Piëch's project. The question is simple: is Alfa Romeo for sale?

The answer is just as clear: no. Once again, the Italian brand remains untouchable. A few months later, the PSA-FCA merger gave birth to Stellantis, which promised to invest in all its brands and confirmed that none would be sold. The German dream ends here.

What if Alfa Romeo had become a Volkswagen Group brand?

This is where the real automotive fantasy begins. Volkswagen has already proved its ability to revive prestigious brands: Lamborghini, Bentley or Bugatti (and even Ducati) have all prospered thanks to colossal industrial resources while retaining a strong identity.

In this context, Alfa Romeo would probably have occupied a very special place: an emotional sports car positioned between Audi and Porsche, with shared platforms but a Latin character. A Giulia, the technical cousin of an Audi, an SUV close to a Macan, high-performance engines and, perhaps above all, a complete range. With the German group's industrial strength, 300,000 to 400,000 annual sales would no longer seem unrealistic.

The essential question remains: would a German-controlled Alfa Romeo still be an Alfa? Automotive history shows that technical rationalization improves quality, but sometimes standardizes sensations. Some believe that Lamborghini gained in efficiency but lost some of its craziness after its move to Audi. Yet Lamborghini's cars are well developed and produced in Italy, and the brand has never been in better financial and sales shape. And Alfa Romeo's technical pooling is well established, first with Fiat (Alfa Romeo Giulietta, Mito, Tonale), then with Peugeot (Alfa Romeo Junior). Would Alfa Romeo, a deeply emotional brand, have retained the character that still makes its reputation with Volkswagen platforms? A recent example is Cupra, which achieved its highest sales figures to date in 2025, with 328,800 vehicles delivered.

A still uncertain future

Today, under Stellantis, Alfa Romeo is preparing its second transformation. Initially, it was to be transformed into a 100 % electric brand. In the end, the new Stelvio and Giulia were postponed, the current Tonale, Giulia and Stelvio models were extended and the brand continued to survive with a reduced range. Between postponed projects and global ambitions, history has been repeating itself for almost two decades.

That's precisely what makes this story so fascinating. The Volkswagen Group may have missed a major strategic acquisition... or avoided transforming a Latin symbol into a perfectly calibrated industrial product. We'll never know what Alfa Romeo would have been like in this parallel universe. But one thing is certain: rarely has a brand made a competitor dream so much... without ever agreeing to belong to it.