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Alfa Romeo MiTo dropped from Australian line-up

The Alfa Romeo MiTo light hatchback has been removed from the Australian line-up without so much as a quiet ciao.


With just four sales so far this year, and only 156 for all of 2015, the little hatchback essentially faded into obscurity. To put this into context, Alfa Romeo has sold 177 units of the 4C sports car and just 160 examples of the MiTo hatch in the 15-month period from January 2015.

First launched in 2009 with a rather pointy $31,490 starting price, the MiTo never really hit it off with Australian buyers.

Prices settled to the low $20k range, but that wasn't enough to encourage more than a handful of buyers to sample the plucky Italian, which shared its underpinning with the even less-successful Opel Corsa.

The top-specification QV model had the sporty looks and initially the numbers to match, but was soon outclassed by often less-expensive, albeit less-Italian rivals.

The 125kW/250Nm 1.4-litre MultiAir turbo four-cylinder was no match for the 134kW/290Nm Ford Fiesta ST, 132kW/250Nm Volkswagen Polo GTI and 147kW/240Nm Renault Clio RS.

Lucy McLellan, FCA Australia Director Corporate Communications told CarAdvice this week: "the Alfa Romeo MiTo played an important role for us locally, but FCA's global plans for Alfa Romeo have been laid out in full, and our focus in Australia is on new and incoming product, spearheaded by the Giulia in Q1 2017, which will join the recently launched 4C, 4C Spider and the Giulietta."

Alfa Romeo vehicles share floor space with Fiat at the dealership level, so any small hatch hole left by the little Alfa is filled by the recently updated Fiat 500.

"This will now see the Fiat and Alfa Romeo dealerships with full showroom displays, equipped with our entire range of vehicles, including the new Fiat 500, 500X, Abarth and Freemont, and the soon-to-arrive Abarth 124 Spider, encouraging favourable throughput for our dealers," McLellan said.

Alfa Romeo will continue to sell the small Giulietta hatch and 4C sports car, which will be joined by the highly-anticipated Giulia sports sedan in early 2017.

But until then, arrivederci MiTo!

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James Ward

With over 20 years of experience in digital publishing, James Ward has worked within the automotive landscape since 2007 and brings experience from the publishing, manufacturer and lifestyle side of the industry together to spearhead Drive's multi-media content direction.

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