The CEO of Honda is pulling the car over and giving a stern lecture to the kids in the backseat.
That, a Scion gets a corporate makeover, Google goes in for autonomous feng shui, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is drowning in modules and a famous British racetrack could get even Britisher … after the break!
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.
News that 200 production would instantly end, albeit temporarily, was overshadowed by news that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles would, sooner than later, farm out the design and production of their small and intermediate cars to a rival automaker.
The Chrysler 200’s plant in Sterling, Michigan will undergo a six-week shutdown due to an inventory glut at dealers nationwide. Over the last three months, U.S. sales of the 200, FCA’s best-selling car in the United States in 2015, tumbled 46 percent to only 24,111 units, or about the number of Camrys Toyota sells every 18 days. (Read More…)
FCA’s sweater-in-chief Sergio Marchionne has a plan to turn around the debt-laden and ailing automaker: stop building cars that lose money. That sounds like common sense, so long as oil prices stay low and the demand for trucks, SUVs and crossovers remains high.
But that plan introduces a new set of problems, chief among them the fact that ditching the car market leaves FCA exceptionally exposed to future volatility in oil prices. Crude prices affect prices at the pump, which affects the demand for certain types of vehicles. Sergio is betting oil prices will stay low by focusing on vehicles with ever-increasing price tags and ever-growing gas tanks.
Still, there will always be some demand for small cars. It was true in 1950 and it is true today. So what will Mr. Sweater do to meet that demand? Simple: he’ll buy those vehicles from another automaker and badge engineer them the old-fashioned way.
An Illinois dealer said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, through its regional sales offices, was intimidating and bribing dealers to report bogus sales at the end of the month to reach inflated sales targets. Automotive News reported first on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit filed by dealers of the Napleton Automotive Group accuses FCA of conspiring to inflate sales numbers through payments of tens of thousands of dollars to the dealer in co-op advertising accounts to disguise the practice. The lawsuit says FCA uses bogus third-party data from J.D. Power and Urban Science to falsely “verify” the sales figures and report publicly that the automaker has continued monthly sales growth since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.
The news of the lawsuit and its allegations sunk shares of Fiat so far that trading on its stock was halted in Europe, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Read More…)
The Detroit News ran a story today claiming that Michael Manley, head of the Jeep brand, confirmed a Jeep pickup will be produced. However, careful reading of the quote given by the brand’s top executive reveals nothing but a hedge.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced this week that they would be recalling nearly 500,000 SUVs — including more than 350,000 in the U.S. — for a vanity mirror wire that could potentially overheat and increase risk for a fire.
The affected SUVs are model year 2011-2012 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Durangos made before Sept. 2, 2012. Those cars were the subject of an earlier recall that, if conducted improperly, could leave those cars more susceptible to a short circuit.
FCA said it was unaware of any injuries.
In October 2015, not the first time, Jeep was FCA’s meal ticket in the United States.
Little more than one month ago, we discussed the fact that non-Jeep sales at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ U.S. division were unhealthy at best, particularly given the boom experienced by the industry as a whole.
Fortunately for FCA, October was different. Combined sales at Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, and Ram were up six percent last month. (The five lower-volume brands are down one percent, year-to-date.) Yet across the FCA lineup, as year-over-year sales improved by 25,065 units, Jeep accounted for 18,363 of those extra sales on its own, or 73 percent of the increased volume. (Read More…)
The Dodge Viper will end production in 2017 when the current model expires, according to approved language included in the United Auto Workers’ contract with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
According to Automotive News, the Conner Avenue plant, which makes the sportscar, doesn’t have future product planned beyond 2017, effectively sealing the fate for the flagging car. The Viper was re-launched in 2011 after a three-year hiatus and has struggled ever since.
In the past few days there has been a flurry of posts about Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ending production of the Dodge Viper in 2017 and closing the Conner Avenue Assembly facility where the v-10 powered sportscar is hand-built.
When I see a news story, I’ll try to seek out the original reporting and if possible, the original source material. Now that I’ve seen that source material, and asked Conner’s plant manager about the matter, I’m not convinced that the Viper’s demise is a certainty. Viper fans shouldn’t go hanging snakeskin* crepe just yet. (Read More…)
The union representing workers at the Fiat 500L factory in Kragujevac, Serbia has a big job ahead of it. Workers are demanding raises, bonuses, and a steady work schedule. In its most recent newsletter, the union listed those demands once again, but instead of news of a pay negotiation the union told workers they’ve negotiated a chicken discount at a local butcher.
Samostalni Sindikat FAS has represented workers at the 500L factory since their collective bargaining agreement was signed in 2010. At the time, the union was able to negotiate fair wages and additional benefits for workers, including a 31,000 RSD ($294 USD) monthly average salary. Workers were happy as many were unemployed after Yugo production was shut down in 2008, and the wage was considered fair at the time.
The supercar maker may be valued at more than $12.4 billion ahead of its initial public offering, which could happen as early as Friday, Bloomberg (via Automotive News) reported.
Ferrari may price its shares Friday night when it offers 10 percent of the Maranello-based automaker to the public. The remaining ownership of the carmaker will remain largely with the same ownership group, comprised mostly of the Agnelli family and Piero Lardi Ferrari.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne said in July that Ferrari would be worth roughly $11 billion, which analysts balked at being a little ambitious. Since then, Ferrari’s value may have climbed as Marchionne told investors that Ferrari wasn’t necessarily an automaker, but rather a luxury brand that could be more profitable than a traditional carmaker.
On Wednesday night, as the deadline for strike action came closer and closer, the United Auto Workers-Fiat Chrysler Automobiles National Bargaining Committee announced they had “secured significant gains” over the last proposed tentative agreement that was widely rejected by UAW membership.
Details on the new agreement were not published.
The new proposed agreement averts a strike — for now — and will be sent Friday to local union leaders that comprise the UAW National Chrysler Council for discussion and voting.
“We heard from our members, and went back to FCA to strengthen their contract,” said UAW President Dennis Williams early Thursday morning in a statement. “We’ve reached a proposed Tentative Agreement that I believe addresses our members’ principal concerns about their jobs and their futures. We have made real gains and I look forward to a full discussion of the terms with our membership.”
FCA acknowledged they reached a new proposed tentative agreement with the union, but declined to give specifics due to the pending vote by UAW members.
Total Fiat Chrysler Automobiles volume is up six percent this year thanks to record sales at Jeep, FCA’s top-selling outlet. However, despite that wave of Jeep-directed affection in the U.S., sales at the company’s other brands have fallen two percent through the first nine months of 2015.
Even in September, an extraordinarily high-volume month for the U.S. auto industry, a month in which sales shot up 15 percent compared with the same period one year earlier, FCA’s non-Jeep marques posted only a modest one percent increase. Jeep’s 40 percent surge to more than 77,000 sales produced a 14 percent overall uptick for FCA’s U.S. operations, which includes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram plus Fiat and Alfa Romeo. (Read More…)
United Auto Workers at a Kokomo, Indiana plant have given notice to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles that it would strike Wednesday night, Automotive News reported. The notice is reportedly being used at other plants.
The automaker acknowledged the notification via a statement released Tuesday:
FCA US confirms that it has received strike notification from the UAW. The Company continues to work with the UAW in a constructive manner to reach a new agreement.
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