Formula 1 News: Fiat Chrysler Could Bring Back Alfa Romeo To Rival Ferrari

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It was the personal wish of no less than Fiat Chrysler top brass Sergio Marchionne to see the Alfa Romero brand making its way to the Formula One stage once again after taking a break from the sport for almost three decades.

"It's incredible how the Alfa marque remains in people's hearts," Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, told reporters in an end-of-season news conference at the Italian team's Maranello headquarters.

"For that very reason we are thinking about bringing it back, as our competitor, to racing, to Formula One. It's important for Alfa to return," he added. The Italian-Canadian executive is also the president for Ferrari.

The chief executive for the company who owns both of the brands would want to bring back the Alfa Romeo brand to Formula One and see it go head to head against Ferrari. Currently, the latter was tapped by three teams, apart from its own works crew, to supply them with the power unit for the upcoming 2016 championship, wrote Fox Sports.

These three squads are the Swiss-based Sauber, Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso, and the new American squad Haas. And, should Fiat Chrysler decided to make the plan of reviving the Alfa Romeo brand in the sport a reality, the company could be looking at one of these three squads to race with its Ferrari engine rebranded as Alfa Romeo.

According to Marchionne, the team behind Ferrari were also carefully considering and looking at the possibility of a rebadged engine with Red Bull, but the deal did not push through. Red Bull decided to hold on to its tie-up with Renault in providing them with an engine.

"The target was to create an engine coherent with the actual F1 rules," said Marchionne of the rebranding plan," according to a Motor Sport article. "I don't know if the performance should be equivalent with the one that we use in the races, but we pushed ourselves hard to do it."

The Italian car giant Fiat purchased Alfa back in the late 80s. In 2014, there were only about 72,000 of these cars sold and Marchionne said that he would want to turn things around and reach a sales of 400,000 units by 2018. Fiat Chrysler has a 48-billion-euro ($52.85 billion) five-year investment plan centered on turning Alfa Romeo, Jeep, and Maserati into global brands, says a report from Yahoo Sports.

The Alfa Romero brand has a long and decorated history in the sports including the first two Formula One world championships it won in 1950 and 1951.