Neat!\u00a0 This display is typical.\u00a0 The car in all it’s polished glory, some pictures from the meaningful part of its life, and a simple sign telling you what it is and when it was made.\u00a0 What is this -an 8C2900 LeMans? <\/strong>As I walked around the cars, poking my head in open windows, touching controls, reading display cards and just being overwhelmed by the overload of this many cars of this much significance all in the same place, I kept wondering:\u00a0 where is everyone?<\/p>\n Of course FIAT wants to shut the museum down and sell off the collection -they own Alfa, but have never really nurtured Alfa as a unique brand or internalized the history of the marque -rather they’ve parts-bin engineered some decent looking cars that could just as easily wear a FIAT badge.\u00a0 It’s like Coca Cola owning San Pellegrino.\u00a0 Do you think Coke gives a crap about anything except the opportunities for some efficiencies to increase corporate profits?\u00a0 Me neither.<\/p>\n The question is begged:\u00a0 If I found a paper bag with a billion dollars in it, was able to buy the collection and do with it what I pleased, what would I do?\u00a0 (not that I think it’s worth a billion -just read this as A LOT of money -enough to keep myself alive and pursue mischief in a big way).<\/p>\n Wishing I had a better camera when I was there.<\/strong><\/p>\n What would I do with the collection?\u00a0 I’d develop it into a destination or destinations.<\/p>\n I’d move it to somewhere accessible, preferably with a racetrack nearby. Milan?\u00a0 As the ancestral home it makes the most sense.\u00a0 The collection is large, so it could potentially be divided into two locations -maybe Milan and Turin?\u00a0 The USA is, in a lot of ways, an important center for Alfa -with a very active national club, lots of local clubs, lots of older Alfa’s still on the road and Y.T.\u00a0 If they bring Alfa back to the states as they keep promising, a marque museum would be nice way to help rekindle brand awareness.\u00a0 But where in the US is right for an Alfa museum?\u00a0 It has to be a destination place, -maybe right here in California.\u00a0 Milan and San Francisco?\u00a0 Actually, wherever the headquarters ends up is probably the right place.\u00a0 But you get my point.\u00a0 Make it accessible.<\/p>\n I’d create an event space out of it.\u00a0 It would host auctions, civic functions, high profile weddings etc.\u00a0 It would have a gallery for visiting exhibitions.\u00a0 I’d have a cafe and a very good restaurant attached to it.\u00a0 I’d have a shop with tasteful merchandise.\u00a0 I know what you’re thinking -exactly!\u00a0 I’d copy what BMW<\/a> and Porsche<\/a> have done with their collections.\u00a0 Make the collection the center of a viable, profitable business.<\/p>\n The never-was (well, once at least) update on the Sprint Speciale.\u00a0 Needs a good Italian tune-up I bet -I’ll handle that.<\/strong><\/p>\n I would grow the collection if the enterprise was successful.\u00a0 I hear the BAT cars can be had for a mighty song.\u00a0 I would work out ownership assumption schemes with current owners of important\/interesting cars.\u00a0 Oh, and me being me -I’d make all the cars fully functional and use them occasionally.<\/p>\n Last thing I’d do?\u00a0 Bank-roll a big budget production movie based on the era of Alfa racing, culminating in the 1935 dramatic punch-line that was Nuvolari’s trouncing of the Nazi’s at the Nurburgring.\u00a0 The theater would be crying as Tazio pulled a recording of the Italian national anthem for the Germans to play.\u00a0 Can you imagine the brand awareness and merchandising opportunity that this would create if very well done?\u00a0 Might spawn a whole series of movies based on the heroic stories that need to be told.<\/p>\n Selling off the collection is the last thing FIAT should do!<\/p>\n What would you do if the collection was yours?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/giuliettas.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/screen-shot-2012-03-07-at-11-43-36-am.png?resize=525%2C393\" "\\"Screen")
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