Alfa Romeo doubles European sales in bumper six months
New Tonale launched in second half of 2023
Importance of new Tonale made clear as Italian brand posts 57% global uptick in first half of 2023
Alfa Romeo has posted dramatic sales increases in each of its core markets in the first half of 2023, hailing the uptick as a "consolidation of clear, steady growth".
While the brand acknowledged that "2023 is proving to be complex and full of global variables that pose a challenge", it boosted registrations significantly in Europe, China, the Middle East and Africa for a global hike of 57%.
Sales in Europe, most notably, doubled year-on-year. Alfa Romeo has not published a detailed breakdown of sales per model, but the introduction of the new, hybridised Alfa Romeo Tonale crossover will have made a sizeable contribution to that increase.
Meanwhile, in China – an increasingly important market for Alfa as it looks to cement its positioning as a premium brand in the vein of BMW and Mercedes – the brand is also enjoying a resurgence, recording a 35% increase in Alfa Romeo Giulia sales from January to June, and a 94% overall sales increase in May alone.
As testament to the Asian market's importance to Alfa Romeo, the brand recently revealed the updated Giulia and Stelvio in China, and has opened a new flagship dealership in Hong Kong.
Alfa also highlights that sales in the Middle East and Africa were up by a massive 173%, pointing to Turkey in particular as "the global leader in terms of volume growth rate". Its performance in the UAE (a crucial market for premium brands) was promising, too, with sales rising 37%.
Alfa Romeo CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato said: “The results for the first half of the year vindicates the work done by the entire team. We are achieving the goals we set for ourselves with great humility and self-sacrifice.
"The discipline with which we are pursuing our strategy is based on the desire to establish ourselves as a leader in the premium sector in terms of quality, and the awards we have received are the proof of that.
"We’re therefore maintaining our passion and determination to ensure that 2023 ends with results that remain on track and become even better than an extremely positive first half of the year.”
Alfa Romeo has not given any indication of its first-half performance in the US, a market it returned to just six years ago following a 22-year absence from the market. In the first quarter of 2023, however, the Italian brand sold just 2390 cars Stateside - a 27% drop on the same period in 2022.
Cracking North American is crucial to Alfa's volume ambitions, and indeed it is planning to launch a US-centric, electric large saloon in 2027.