FCA Unveils 5-Year Plan On Tuesday
Published: May 5th, 2014
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Today is Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday used as an excuse by Americans to drink margaritas and eat bad Tex-Mex. But tomorrow, Fiat Chrysler will unveil their next five-year plan, which should clarify the many contradictory product plans being touted by both FCA execs and the media.
Among the areas expected to be clarified tomorrow:
- Which of the two minivans will survive FCA’s nameplate consolidation. The smart money is on the Chrysler Town & Country, with the Grand Caravan’s replacement taking the form of a three-row crossover
- Alfa Romeo’s return to the United States beyond the low volume 4C sports car
- The future direction of the Chrysler and Dodge brands. FCA has been taking steps to eliminate overlap between the two brands (for example, redesigning the Chrysler 200 while axing its Dodge Avenger sister car), but both lack a strong identity. Chrysler is a mainstream pseudo-upscale brand, while Dodge is a mainstream pseudo-performance brand. Dodge’s customer base skews much younger, but its raison d’etre is flimsy enough that there has been talk of axing it now that the high-performance SRT brand has been spun off of it.
- Jeep is making an aggressive push in world markets, with a view to doubling sales by 2018 to 1.5 million units.
- Ram trucks have been a major profit center for Chrysler, but the aluminum Ford F-150 will present a real challenge to Ram’s new diesel half-ton truck.
- Hybrids and alternative powertrains are expected to be discussed. Although Jeep and Ram have a diesel powertrain through VM Motori (a Fiat owned company) and Ram has a long relationship with Cummins, FCA lacks any sort of hybrid technology, and is lagging in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rankings. FCA is also reliant on Jeep and Ram for much of their financial success, putting them at a further disadvantage. The only announcement regarding hybrid cars was a brief one about a next-generation hybrid minivan sometime later in the decade.
We’ll have full coverage of the event tomorrow.
More by Derek Kreindler
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The Chrysler and Dodge Brands have so many product holes in them. If recent history has taught us anything is that every Chrysler brand should be selling a small, medium and large crossover. The Dodge Journey isnt really all that competitive in its segment if you ask me, and a fresh sheet design would do wonders. Fiat dealers need something besides the 500 and 500C to sell. A few other models and a roadster would be good. Also, Alfa Romeo and Masarati need to product offensive in this country. If BMW, Mercedes and Audi have tought us anything, is that prodcing luxury cars and charging a premium for a badge is essentially a license to print money. All the wanna be ballers, social climbers and people with too much money need to be in play. The Germans get too much of that good thing, I think the Italians could do equally well on the brand image front, maybe not with Fiat, but definitely with Alfa and Masarati.
I wonder how the diesel Grand Cherokee is doing. The Liberty CRD apparently did pretty well its first year but then was legislated out of existence...