The American half of the newly dubbed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles reported a net income of $1.6 billion in Q4 2013, the majority of which came from a one-time tax gain of $962 million.

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Now that Sergio Marchionne has succeeded in joining Fiat and Chrysler together, for his next act he’s planning on moving Fiat’s headquarters out of Italy. While such a move has tax advantages, it would present a political and public relations challenge for Fiat and Marchionne in their home country. According to Reuters, the new entity, dubbed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, will be a Dutch-based company with a UK tax domicile, while shares are listed on the NYSE with a secondary listing in Milan.

Marchionne is aware that locating the headquarters outside of Italy, where Fiat has operated for 115 years and has received government funding, or outside the United States, where Chrysler was bailed out by the federal government, could make waves and there is the possibility that the Italian government might intervene. “I’ve seen weirder things happen,” Marchionne said to journalists at the recent Detroit auto show. “So I sincerely hope they don’t create obstacles.” (Read More…)

So far in this series, I’ve had no luck finding Chrysler Cordobas from the first couple years of production. We’ve seen this ’78 (which provided me with a beautiful Corinthian Leather garage couch), this ’79, and this ’80 prior to today, and now we’ve got a genuine, Ricardo-approved 1976 Cordoba. (Read More…)

Fiat announced that it has completed the acquisition of all remaining shares in Chrysler Group that it did not own. The United Auto Workers’ retiree healthcare trust, known as a voluntary employee beneficiary association or VEBA, received $3.65 billion in cash for its 41.46% stake in the Auburn Hills based automaker, $1.9 billion of which came from Chrysler and $1.75 billion from Fiat. The total deal is worth $4.35 billion, with Chrysler committed to pay the trust the remaining $700 million in four annual equal payments, the first of which was made when the deal was consummated. (Read More…)

Mircea Gradu, who had headed Chrysler’s transmission, powertrain and driveline engineering since 2011, left the company to pursue other interests, according to a company statement released last week. Part of Gradu’s responsibilities were the development and launch of the new Jeep Cherokee’s innovative all wheel drive system that can allow the rear axle to freewheel to save fuel. That launch was delayed when 25,000 assembled Cherokees were held back from dealers while engineers recalibrated the software that controls the powertrain and then tested the vehicles. The same basic drivetrain components are planned to be used in a number of other Chrysler group vehicles, starting with the all new 2015 Chrysler 200 introduced last week at the Detroit auto show. (Read More…)

Car shopping used to be so simple: you could buy a truck or a car. Then came the wagon, minivan, sport utility and the latest craze: the crossover. There’s just one problem with the crossover for me however: it’s not a crossover. With a name like that you’d assume that a modern crossover blended the lines between a truck/SUV with a car/minivan. The reality of course is that the modern three-row crossover is just a front-driving minivan that doesn’t handle as well or haul as much stuff. In this sea of transverse minivans in SUV clothing lies just one mass-market vehicle that I can honestly call a three-row crossover: the Dodge Durango. Instead of a car that’s been turned into an AWD minivan with a longer hood, the Dodge uses drivetrains out of the RAM 1500 combined with a car-like unibody. While rumors swirled that the Durango would be canceled in favor of a 7-seat Jeep, Dodge was working a substantial makeover for 2014. (Read More…)

More shots of the next Chrysler 200 have leaked out, and the resemblance between the 200 and the Dart is definitely evident. There’s no escaping common hard points.

Even when manufacturers restrict access to events, press fleets and product previews, TTAC manages to get the juicy details, thanks to an overlooked segment of the automotive industry. Our network of supplier sources is far and wide, spanning all tiers and market segments, and our latest bit of information comes from one source, who raised an interesting question about the Chrysler 200.

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Detroit’s triumvirate of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are on pace to gain market share at home against their European and Asian competitors when the final numbers for 2013 are released later today, thanks to American consumers finding the Detroit Three’s offerings more attractive than what the competition has to offer.

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Fiat SpA said on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to buy the remaining 41.5% stake in Chrysler that it does not own from the United Auto Worker’s retiree health-care trust, known as VEBA, for $3.65 billion in cash up front and another $700 million after the deal is completed. The agreement will allow Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne to realize his dream of creating a global automotive group out of the two companies. The joint automaker would be the 7th largest in the world. (Read More…)

Bloomberg is reporting that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has resumed talks with the UAW’s retiree health care trust (aka VEBA) to buy the 41.5% of Chrysler that the Italian automaker doesn’t yet own. Fiat executives met last week with the trust’s representatives. The proposed initial public offering of Chrysler stock has been delayed for tax reasons until next year, creating a window of opportunity for a deal. Differing valuations on the stock prompted VEBA’s demand for the IPO, which would establish a market price for the stock, most likely more than Marchionne and the Agnelli family that controls Fiat want to pay. (Read More…)

The folks at Allpar have discovered an undisguised Chrysler 200 driving around sans camo. Looking like a cross between a Dart and a Chevrolet Impala, the 200 will use the same CUSW architecture as the Dart and Jeep Cherokee, along with the 2.4L 4-cylinder and Pentastar V6 engines.

With what will likely turn out to be a brief decline in utility vehicles at the Ford Motor Company, sales of SUVs and crossovers at the Chrysler Group were stronger in November 2013 than they were at Ford and Lincoln.

How’d they do it? The Dodge Durango’s 36% increase – its lowest year-over-year improvement since May – was basically cancelled out by the Dodge Journey’s 22% slide. But at Jeep, where sales had been down 2% through the first ten months of 2013, the new Cherokee’s long-awaited first full month on the market helped to power a 30% brand-wide jump.

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The Neon sold in respectable numbers during its 1995-2005 production run, most Detroit cars in high-turnover self-serve wrecking yards are 12-15 years old, and so you’ll see many, many Neons in such yards these days. Most of the time, Neons are just junkyard background noise to me as I look for interesting cars to photograph for this series; I’ll shoot a rare Neon R/T, but that’s about it. Still, something about the dot-com-boom optimism of the Expresso trim level catches my attention, so I paused to document this ’96 in its final parking spot. (Read More…)

There’s just something about a diesel pickup truck that makes grown men regress into Tonka-loving children. Even my Prius-driving environmentalist friends in Berkeley admit they secretly want a diesel pickup. The problem of course is that diesel pickups are expensive (the cheapest diesel Ram 2500 is $36,975 and it doesn’t have an automatic transmission, the cheapest oil-burning F-250 is $38,250) and, for the majority of us, the high payload and towing capacities are overkill. While economical in a specific sense, the large diesel trucks aren’t “fuel-efficient” either. Until now. Mark your calendars folks, The 2014 Ram 1500 Eco Diesel is the half-ton truck in America sporting a small diesel engine.

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