The death of Fiat: Proof that brand building is non-negotiable
It makes sense to blame the rush of Chinese car imports into the Australian market for the local collapse of Fiat. As Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s senior marketing scientist Arry Tanusondjaja writes, while this is a factor, the brand’s lacklustre marketing presence certainly didn’t help.
Fiat has suspended imports of its passenger cars to Australia. It’s easy to blame Chinese car brands for the struggles of some European manufacturers here. After all, brands such as BYD, GWM and Chery have grown at remarkable speed, while Fiat is languishing at the bottom.
In June 2026, Fiat reportedly only sold 13 passenger cars as part of the 144 cars sold in the first half of the year. Competition certainly matters. However, it only tells part of the story.
Until the end of last year, I drove a Fiat 500X. I genuinely liked the car because of its retro styling and could easily have replaced it with another Fiat as an upgrade. Instead, I bought a different brand. The reason wasn’t the brand or the product. It was because my local authorised Fiat service centre in Adelaide stopped servicing the brand. I was informed that the nearest authorised service centre was in Victoria. At that point, staying with the brand became unnecessarily difficult.
This was a gradual dismantling of physical availability. In automotive, physical availability extends well beyond having vehicles in dealerships. It also includes servicing, spare parts, warranty support and the confidence that owners can continue to use the brand with ease.
For Fiat, it is not just the loss of physical availability. If we try to think about any automotive advertising over the past few years, brands such as Toyota, Ford, Kia, Hyundai, Mazda, or Mitsubishi would come to mind. We can still see these brands in the Top 10 car sales in Australia. Then, we will probably also mention the newcomers: BYD, GWM and Chery. Not only we see them on the street, we also see them on TV and other media.
Now, see if you can remember the last Fiat campaign. I can’t remember any.
Read the full article in Mumbrella.