The Lancia automotive brand has been around for long 112 years, but has fallen on hard times lately, with sales dwindling and the model range shrinking. The only currently retailing Lancia is the Ypsilon, a five-door urban hatchback that emerged in 2011. The company intended to put it out of production, too, thus essentially killing off the badge for good. Now, however, a solution has been found.
As you may remember, the FCA Group, which also includes Lancia, signed a merger deal with the PSA Group. The CEO of the latter emphasized that no brands would be sacrificed as the result. To eliminate the cannibalization of own sales, the brands would be repositioned so as to occupy different market niches. He added that Volkswagen Group had even more subordinate brands, but performed well nonetheless.
The Ypsilon is currently only available in Italy, but its sales in 2019 grew considerably compared to the year before, surpassing Alfa Romeo sales in the entire Europe over the same period. With things looking up, we will likely be seeing new Lancia cars in the near future.
It should be noted that Chrysler also has it hard these days. Its current range only includes the elderly 300 sedan/saloon and the Pacifica/Voyager MPVs.
Once the FCA/PSA merger is complete, the resulting corporation will control 14 badges, including Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall.