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Fiat Chrysler open to mergers, and PSA is looking for one

GENEVA — Fiat Chrysler (FCA) is open to pursuing alliances and merger opportunities if they make sense, but a sale of its luxury brand Maserati is not an option, Chief Executive Mike Manley said on Tuesday. "We have a strong independent future, but if there is a partnership, a relationship or a merger which strengthens that future, I will look at that," Manley told reporters at the Geneva Motor Show. Asked whether he would consider selling Maserati to China's Geely Automobile Holdings, as suggested by recent media reports, Manley said: "Maserati is one of our really beautiful brands and it has an incredibly bright future. ... No." FCA is often cited as a possible merger candidate. Bloomberg said this week that the Italian-American carmaker was attractive to France's PSA Group given its exposure to the U.S. market and its popular Jeep brand. The Detroit News' headline on the situation Friday read, "Fiat Chrysler CEO open to a deal as PSA circles" and stated that Manley's open-to-just-about-anything comments were aimed directly at PSA. Bloomberg said talks between the two were preliminary and said PSA chief Carlos Tavares has also contemplated mergers with General Motors or Jaguar Land Rover, which is losing money for Indian owner Tata. PSA has enjoyed a decade of turnaround and has $10.2 billion in net cash available. The maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS, acquired Opel and Vauxhall in 2017 and made them almost instantly profitable. Manley, who took over after the death of Sergio Marchionne, said he currently had no news on possible deals. Manley also said the world's seventh-largest carmaker, which is lagging rivals in developing hybrid and electric vehicles, would take the least costly approach to comply with increasingly more stringent European emissions regulations. "There are three options. You can sell enough electrified vehicles to balance your fleet. Two: You can be part of a pooling scheme. Three is to pay the fines," he said. "I don't see a scenario when (carmakers) continue to subsidize technologies ... indefinitely." The carmaker had said last June it would invest 9 billion euros ($10.19 billion) over the next five years to introduce hybrid and electric cars across all regions to be fully compliant with emissions regulations. Asked about a 5-billion-euro investment plan for Italy FCA announced in November but then put under review, Manley said the plan had been confirmed as originally presented.

IIHS says these are the safest cars of 2013

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has revealed its annual list of Top Safety Picks, an award that highlights automobiles it says offer "superior crash protection." A new and still more significant award, the Top Safety Pick+ honor, is given to those vehicles that earn good ratings for occupant protection in four out of five areas of measure. And while some 117 vehicles were given the TSP seal of approval for 2013, just 13 passed muster for TSP+.
To be fair, IIHS only evaluated 29 vehicles with its new testing procedures for TSP+ (we'd expect that the number of qualified cars will rise substantially for 2014). Luxury and Near Luxury midsize cars were the first groups evaluated, followed by midsizers in the Moderately Priced Cars category - unsurprisingly, it's only midsize cars that you'll find among the class this year.
Only two luxury sedans made the list of 13 for 2013: the Acura TL and Volvo S60. The other 11 cars on the list included entries from domestic, Japanese and German car makers: Dodge Avenger, Chrysler 200, Ford Fusion, Honda Accord (sedan and coupe), Kia Optima (but not its close kin, the Hyundai Sonata, strangely), Nissan Altima, Subaru Legacy and Outback, Suzuki Kizashi and the Volkswagen Passat all made the grade.

NHTSA looking into non-Takata airbag shrapnel case

The global airbag inflator recall from Takata has been one of the biggest topics in auto safety for months. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation into the components from Arc Automotive to investigate whether two reported ruptures and two injuries signal a wider problem. So far, only the 2002 Chrysler Town & Country and 2004 Kia Optima are believed to be affected. If a safety campaign is deemed necessary, it could cover an estimated 420,000 of the minivans and 70,000 of the Korean sedans. NHTSA first noticed these ruptures in December 2014. The agency received a complaint of a 2009 case in Ohio about the bursting of the driver's side inflator in a 2002 Town & Country. According to the report, the incident broke the woman's jaw and sent shrapnel into her chest. The government investigated the case, and this was found to be the only known occurrence in these vehicles. The analysis indicated the part's gases were possibly blocked somehow and caused the component to explode. FCA US spokesperson Eric Mayne told Autoblog that the company is "cooperating fully" with NHTSA. "Also, we no longer use that inflator," he said. A second incident came to NHTSA's attention in June 2015 with the driver's side rupture in a 2004 Optima in New Mexico. The agency lists fewer details about the case, and a root cause isn't known. This is also the only currently known example in a Kia vehicle. According to a statement from Kia to Autoblog, "We are taking this matter very seriously and support NHTSA's action and will continue working cooperatively with the agency and suppliers throughout the process." Arc's components are sealed within a steel housing that's meant to protect them from "external atmospheric conditions," according to NHTSA. Multiple suppliers also use them. In the Chrysler, the airbag module came from Key Safety Systems and from Delphi in the Kia. In a statement to Autoblog the company said, "We have received NHTSA's notification and are cooperating fully with its Preliminary Evaluation." At this time, NHTSA admits that it doesn't know for certain whether these two cases are linked. The agency is conducting this preliminary evaluation to learn more.