#Fiat500L

Fiat Chrysler’s Serbian assembly plant was the first European auto factory to shut down as a result of the growing coronavirus pandemic — a grim harbinger of things to come, and not just for Europe.

That temporary February shutdown stemmed from a parts shortage arising from the hard-hit Chinese manufacturing sector. A far more prolonged shutdown came in mid-March, for obvious reasons. Well, that’s all over, as a crucially important product is now back in production, ready to satiate the hunger of the American buying public.

Of all the production upsets born of coronavirus-caused supply chain disruptions, the idling of Fiat Chrysler’s Kragujevac, Serbia assembly plant is certainly not near the top. Not for American consumers, anyway.

The automaker announced Friday that the plant, home to the unloved Fiat 500L, will be offline until sometime late in the month. If U.S. inventory suffered, would anyone notice?

The Downward Spiral wasn’t just a groundbreaking Nine Inch Nails album — it also aptly describes Fiat’s current sales trajectory in North America. (Sorry for the headline, Corey.)

With January 2018 figures out of the bag, the state of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Fiat brand becomes ever clearer, though we’ve known it was in trouble for some time. Reintroduced in this market in early 2011, the four-model brand continued its downhill sales slide last month, with corporate cousin Alfa Romeo outselling it for the second consecutive month.

How bad is it?

It’s bad.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles did not sell any Fiat 500Ls in Canada in August.

Hyperbole has gotten the best of modern society. You might say, “Those chips have no taste,” when asking your grocery-shopping spouse to stop buying those Garden Veggie Straws you so detest. But there is some taste; just not much. (Recommended: the rosemary olive oil flavor.)

“Alex Ovechkin doesn’t score goals any more,” your Capitals-loving son says. No, Ovechkin just doesn’t score as many goals as he used to.

Politicians never work together. There’s no sea ice in the Arctic. Subcompact crossovers always suck.

That’s the sort of rhetoric that minimizes the value of truth when truth is presented in an equally straightforward fashion. But in all seriousness, FCA Canada truly did not sell a single Fiat 500L in August 2017.

In fact, with alarming frequency, FCA Canada’s sales reports don’t include any Fiat 500L sales. But FCA Canada is sticking to its guns, unrelenting in the face of a horrifying popularity dearth, immutable when challenged by a Fiat lineup that needs an overhaul. FCA Canada confirmed as such to TTAC this morning: there will be a 2018 Fiat 500L.

The strike is over.

Inventory can once again ramp up.

After 21 days of concern over the future of Fiat 500L, FCA’s Serbian employees are back at work.

And, uh, it doesn’t appear as though dealer stock of 500Ls grew dangerously low in the meantime.

Each week, TTAC’s basic car correspondent Matthew Guy brings you an Ace of Base article. Matt’s carefully selected examples are base models which tick many desirability boxes, proving you don’t need thousands of dollars in engine upgrades, brakes, pieces of trim, or tech packages to have good and enjoyable transportation. Overall, the Ace of Base series is positive and uplifting, presenting us with the best of the best of base. The other half of the basic coin is being ignored, however, and that’s where you come in.

Today we seek your nominations for the new vehicle which best represents a Waste of Base.

Entering June 2017, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ U.S. dealers had a 219-day supply of Fiat 500Ls, roughly 1,400 cars in stock for a nameplate that generates fewer than 200 U.S. sales per month.

At least for the time being, however, U.S. Fiat dealers won’t be accepting any new copies of the 500L.

Unfortunately for the Serbian economy, the Fiat 500L’s inventory reduction in the United States is merely a byproduct of a strike at FCA’s Kragujevac assembly plant. That facility, which is one-third owned by the Serbian government, produces 8 percent of the nation’s exports.

Consequently, Ana Brnabic, Serbia’s prime minister, is advocating for the Kragujevac line workers prompt return to work. “It will be very difficult for us in the future to bring new investors when there is no certainty that workers will honor contracts between unions and employers,” says Brnabic, according to Reuters.

Workers are reportedly after a 30-percent pay hike, as well as workload alterations and transit assistance. FCA wants its workers back. The Serbian government wants FCA to get its workers back.

But car buyers do not want Fiat 500Ls.

It’ll be easier to get into a Fiat 500 next year, but the question is: does anyone want to?

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has cut prices and reduced the number of trim lines of the 2017 500 as the tiny runabout’s popularity wanes, Bloomberg reports.

Nearly one-third of the workforce at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ plant in Kragujevac, Serbia, was laid off last week because of poor Fiat 500L demand.

In the United States, the 500L is by no means the only Fiat that isn’t selling.

Besides the 500L’s sharp U.S. sales decline — year-over-year volume has tumbled each month in the last nine months — the core 500 model which brought Fiat back to life in the U.S. has lost nearly half its volume this year, a 6,288-unit loss through only five months.

Meanwhile, the expectation that a crossover could make up for the poorly received 500L and rapidly aging 500 turned out to be false. A crossover, yes, that will be the ticket. Surely a crossover could work wonders. A relative of the Jeep Renegade, only prettier, could definitely restore Fiat to the peak glory days of 2014.

Glory days, when with two models in its lineup, Fiat USA failed to match its stated goal of 50,000 annual sales for the 500 alone? Of course, that Sergio Marchionne sales forecast was way off target.

Just as the 500L and 500X have missed the mark, as well.

Despite Pope Francis giving the model a thumbs up, sales of the ungainly looking Fiat 500L continue their downward slide, with the automaker announcing it will cut one of three shifts at its Serbian factory.

The cuts made at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ assembly plant in Kragujevac, Serbia amount to nearly 30 percent of Fiat Serbia’s workforce, according to Reuters (via Automotive News Europe). When all three lines were running, the plant employed 3,100 people.

Blame the Fiat 500L’s sinking European fortunes and failure to catch on in the U.S.

Let’s face it: the automotive enthusiast universe wasn’t clamouring for a sub-subcompact, three-cylinder Mitsubishi hatchback. Not surprisingly, the Mitsubishi Mirage ended up on TTAC’s list of 2016’s Ten Worst Automobiles Today.

But after TTAC named 2016’s best and worst vehicles earlier this week, we wondered whether the market agrees with the choices made by TTAC and The Best & Brightest. We know there are stark differences between the number of votes cast for vehicles such as the Mazda6 and the number of consumers who signed on the dotted line to buy a Mazda6. Will such stark differences appear when we look into the amount of support the American car-buying populace has for the very vehicles TTAC’s contributors and B&B despises?

It’s a Dodge Caliber festooned with a seven slot grille and boxy proportions. It exists for no other reason than to leverage the brand equity built up by decades of Jeep heritage. The Patriot*, according to your nominations, our writers, and your votes is — by far — TTAC’s 2016 Worst Automobile Today.

After all the votes were cast, a staggering 66.1 percent of you believed the Jeep Patriot to be the worst new vehicle money could buy. And, as many of you guessed, it’s not the only Fiat Chrysler Automobiles product in the Top 10.

Union workers at the Fiat 500L factory in Serbia ( the same factory that built those fancy Yugos) have been demanding raises and the addition of another model for months. The union representing those workers has promised it will work with the manufacturer to meet worker demands. But, if the latest newsletter is any indication of progress, there’s been none: the union hasn’t even been able to get the company to the bargaining table.

The union newsletter has gotten shorter over the past few months, and the February version is now down to a single page. The news items are both disappointing and somewhat comical as there only a few lines dedicated to the workers’ interests.

New product is not fueling renewed American interest in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ namesake Fiat brand.

The 500X, the latest product added to Fiat’s U.S. lineup, was clearly the brand’s best-selling model in November 2015, but sales at the brand slipped three percent, a modest drop of 82 units. Rewind one year and Fiat’s lineup featured only two nameplates: the 500 with which the brand relaunched in 2011, and the 30-month-old 500L. Adding the 500X, a true subcompact crossover, brought in 1,833 buyers in November 2015.

But the 500 and 500L combined to generate 1,915 fewer sales in November 2015 than in November 2014, astounding losses for a brand which in November of last year suffered a twelve-month sales low.

The Fiat brand’s figures in November 2015 were worse.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released the results of its latest round of small offset crash tests. This latest group of twelve cars posted a wide range of scores, highlighting the challenging nature of the Institute’s newest test. Only one car earned a “Good” rating from the Institute for this test, with several receiving the lowest score of “Poor.”