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Stellantis urges owners to fix Takata airbags after another fatality

Stellantis this morning is emphatically urging owners of older Dodge and Chrysler models equipped with recalled Takata airbags to park their cars until they can have recalls performed after the company on Friday confirmed a third fatality. The company's statement includes instructions for owners and follows this article in its entirety.  This comes just six weeks after the brands comprising the former FCA business unit urged customers to park their cars after two fatal incidents involving defective Takata airbags prompted Stellantis to issue a do-not-drive order for the 2005-2010 Dodge Charger, Magnum and Challenger, along with the Chrysler 300. The company is warning any customers who have not yet had their vehicles inspected in accordance with previous recall campaigns to park their cars until they are able to do so. This order covers more than 275,000 vehicles on the road.  No new recall has been initiated to address the faulty airbags as all of the vehicles in question are within the original population of the massive 2015 campaigns carried out by virtually every major automaker. Industry supplier Takata's airbag inflators have been identified as the cause of more than 30 fatalities when moisture caused them to explode rather than deploy normally in a collision.  Here is the full statement from Stellantis: December 19, 2022 , Auburn Hills, Mich. - FCA US LLC urges owners or custodians of certain older-model Dodge and Chrysler vehicles with unaddressed Takata driver-side air-bag recalls, to immediately stop driving them and contact the Company to obtain the required repair – free of charge. We strongly reiterate our previous warning, having confirmed a third Takata-related fatality involving this population of vehicles. They are equipped with Takata air-bag inflators whose chemical properties may deteriorate over time, particularly if exposed to hot, humid climates. Such conditions may cause the inflators to rupture on deployment, scattering razor-sharp debris capable of causing serious injury or death. “Time is a critical element here because the risk increases with each day these air-bag inflators go unreplaced,” said Tom McCarthy, global head of Technical Safety and Regulatory Compliance at Stellantis. “We have the parts, and the service is free.

3-row Jeep Wrangler, V8 Kaiser ambulance, and more from Mopar for SEMA

SEMA is back this year, and as is tradition, the American Stellantis brands Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Mopar are bringing some truly amazing concepts to the show. The brands have come up with seven vehicles, four from Jeep, two from Ram and one from Dodge. Some of them show off the current Mopar catalog and possible future parts, while others are just really cool customs. Let's check them out. Jeep Wrangler Overlook Jeep Wrangler Overlook concept View 8 Photos We're starting off with perhaps the most interesting of the concepts on display, the Jeep Wrangler Overlook. And you'll notice right off the bat that it's longer than your average Wrangler Unlimited. It's actually a full foot longer. And it doesn't just add cargo space, it adds passenger space. There's a third row of seats in the Overlook. Those seats also necessitated the safari-style custom rear roof. It's 5 inches taller than a regular Wrangler roof to provide headroom for rear occupants. It also made room for the extra windows. Front passengers also get a fancy single-piece roof section with a pop-up glass section, and the interior features black leather and bronze accents. Other body changes include a custom hood, a narrower front bumper for improved approach angle and a widened rear bumper to protect the longer tail. It also gets custom front bumper lights, Jeep Performance Parts (JPP) A-pillar lights and tubular side steps. The Overlook also rides on the Jeep Performance Parts (JPP) 2-inch lift kit with Fox shocks and 20-inch wheels with 37-inch tires. We wouldn't have thought a three-row Wrangler would be something that would reach production, and it's still unlikely. But, this looks really good. And when Land Rover already offers a third row in the Defender, and is working on a stretched version, we're starting to wonder if Jeep should think about an even more stretched Wrangler. Kaiser Jeep M725 Kaiser Jeep M725 concept View 11 Photos Next up is this year's resto-mod from the Stellantis crew. They found an old Kaiser Jeep M725 military ambulance and did a few things to make it a more modern, go-anywhere super tailgater. Under the hood is a 485-horsepower 6.4-liter V8 paired to an old-school TorqueFlight 727 automatic transmission, shifted by a B&M shifter housed in a repurposed ammunition box. It's still four-wheel drive and has the old axles, but they're attached via a coil-spring suspension instead of the original leaf packs.

China-FCA merger could be a win-win for everyone but politicians

NEW YORK — Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne has said the car industry needs to come together, cut costs and stop incinerating capital. So far, his words have mostly fallen on deaf ears among competitors in Europe and North America. But it appears Marchionne has finally found a receptive audience — in China. FCA shares soared Monday after trade publication Automotive News reported the $18 billion Italian-American conglomerate controlled by the Agnelli family rebuffed a takeover from an unidentified carmaker from the Chinese mainland. As ugly as the politics of such a combination may appear at first blush, a transaction could stack up industrially, and perhaps even financially. A Sino-U.S.-European merger would create the first truly global auto group. That could push consolidation to the next level elsewhere. Moreover, China is the world's top market for the SUVs that Jeep effectively invented, so it might benefit FCA financially. A combo would certainly help upgrade the domestic manufacturer; Chinese carmakers have gotten better at making cars, but struggle to build global brands, and they need to develop export markets. Though frivolous overseas shopping excursions by Chinese enterprises are being reined in by Beijing, acquisitions that support the modernization and transformation of strategic industries still receive support, and the government considers the automotive industry to be strategic. A purchase of FCA by Guangzhou Automobile, Great Wall or Dongfeng Motors would probably get the same stamp of approval ChemChina was given for its $43 billion takeover of Syngenta. What's standing in the way? Apart from price (Automotive News said FCA's board deemed the offer insufficient) there's the not-insignificant matter of politics. Even as FCA shares soared, President Donald Trump interrupted his vacation to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to look into whether to investigate China's trade policies on intellectual property. Seeing storied Detroit brands like Jeep, Chrysler, Ram and Dodge handed off to a Chinese company would provoke howls among Trump's economic-nationalist supporters. It might not play well in Italy, either, to see Alfa Romeo and Maserati answering to Wuhan instead of Turin — though Automotive News said they might be spun off separately. Yet, as Morgan Stanley observes, "cars don't ship across oceans easily," and political considerations increasingly demand local manufacture of valuable products.