Worryingly, Volkswagen - manufacturers of reliable, if a little dull, motor cars - are still reported to be sniffing around Alfa Romeo - manufacturers of charismatic, if a little unreliable, motor cars - to add them to their already sizeable family.
On the face of it, using the 'opposites attracting' philosophy, it's a good fit.
Certainly better than the 1980s, when Alfa and Nissan got together to create the Arna. Instead of marrying Alfa's beautiful bodywork to Nissan's bulletproof mechanicals, they did it the other way round... so we got a Nissan Cherry that broke down rather a lot.
But does the world need yet another set of cars based on VW's PQ35 platform? We already have, by my maths, 18 (eighteen).
And where does this all leave SEAT - who Volkswagen labelled their 'Spanish Alfa Romeo'?
But more to the point, did the world ever need a Spanish Alfa Romeo? Given that SEAT have consistently failed to return a profit under VW ownership, I guess the answer is 'no'.
