Auto News 5

Alfa Romeo, the Italian brand known to car enthusiasts but a deep secret to most Americans, celebrates its 100th birthday on June 24th. Preparations are underway for Alfa to return to the US market, a move repeatedly announced throughout the past decade. But this time, Chrysler and Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne seems serious. In two years, Chrysler will be building and selling Alfas and within four years, Marchionne hope this brand will be an Italian-American BMW.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has finally laid out his plan to integrate Fiat and Chrysler and bring Alfa Romeo back to the United States (see sidebar). The new Alfa Giulietta, just now going on sale in Europe, will be one of the models headed stateside (but not before an update in 2014). The car is also a harbinger of a whole series of promising front-wheel-drive cars yet to come from the combined Fiat/Chrysler team.

With three owners in the past three years, it's been a tumultuous time for Chrysler. The lineup has aged and it's been uncomfortably quiet in terms of new product announcements. The 2011 Grand Cherokee breaks the silence and leads a handful of fresh vehicles into showrooms. While Italian automaker Fiat now controls Chrysler, development of this Grand Cherokee began in 2006, when Chrysler was still tied up with Daimler-Benz (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz). For that reason, the newest Jeep has a lot in common with the Mercedes-Benz ML.

The Grand Cherokee first arrived in 1992, and was originally conceived as the replacement for the Cherokee. But with Cherokee sales still strong -- and the SUV segment starting to take off -- Jeep decided to keep both vehicles. Larger and more comfortable than the Cherokee, and equipped with a driver's-side air bag and antilock brakes, the posh Grand Cherokee was the first serious competitor to the blockbuster Ford Explorer, which had been launched in 1990. The two vehicles really fueled the SUV boom. In only its second year, Grand Cherokee sales surpassed 200,000 units, and would eventually touch 300,000 (in 1999). The profit-gushing Grand Cherokee was also a major engine of Chrysler's rosy financial results in the heady 1990s, helping make the company an attractive takeover target for Jurgen Shremp's Daimler-Benz. More recently, sales have returned to earth, slipping below 100,000 in 2008 for the first time since its launch year. Although still an important vehicle for Jeep the Grand Cherokee is no longer the brand's bestseller, as it now follows in the tire tracks of Jeep's original icon, the Wrangler.