2001 Chrysler Prowler on 2040-cars

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Marchionne to take his sweater and go home after 2018

The end is in sight for Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne, who confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg that once FCA's sweeping five-year plan is completed, he'd be stepping down from his post to "undoubtedly" do something else that didn't involve turning around global corporations. That would mean he should finish up after 2018 if all goes according to plan.
"It's as important to walk away from the table as it is to sit down," Marchionne told Bloomberg.
Marchionne has been at Fiat since June of 2004 and is one of the chief architects behind the Italian company's acquisition of Chrysler. Despite his successes, he does sound quite ready to move beyond the auto industry, rhetorically asking his Bloomberg interviewers if there "are other things I like to do apart from this?"

2023 Chrysler 300 gets one new option, otherwise unchanged

Chrysler dropped the goss on the 2023 Chrysler 300 sedan, a bit of whispering that took barely half a minute to read. There is one change coming to next year's 300: The entry-level Touring trim gains the option of the SafeyTec Plus Group. That bundle of features includes advanced brake assist, rain-sensing windshield wipers, LaneSense Lane Departure Warning with Lane Keep Assist, ParkSense front and rear park assist, auto high-beam headlamp control, Full-speed Forward Collision Warning with Active Braking, adaptive cruise control (ACC) with stop, an Alpine audio system with six speakers and a 276-watt amplifier, and an 80-amp alternator. The package costs $2,495 on the next model up, the Touring L, which is probably close to what Chrysler will charge on the Touring. The other new news is a special edition inbound for next year, but the automaker hasn't divulged anything about it. Mopar Insiders says Chrysler will hold a special event at the Detroit Auto Show next week, perhaps we'll find out more then. For a car old enough to have transported Walter P. Chrysler to work and gets effectively zero support in a dying segment, the 300 still looks and performs well and sells adequately. Whereas the Dodge Charger has averaged about 78,000 sales in each of the past two years in the U.S., the 300 had averaged about 17,000 sales in each of the past two years. We'd love to see Chrysler do something — anything — with it before the rumored electric successor arrives. The brand has a huge revamp in the works, though, so we'd also understand Chrysler leaving the old girl in a corner to do her best. Prices haven't been announced yet. We'd expect nominal increases over the current range, which starts at $35,140 for the entry-level rear-wheel-drive Touring and tops out at $46,945 for the 300S with the Hemi V8 before incentives. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Auto Mergers and Acquisitions: Suicide or salvation?

We love the Moses figure. A savior riding in from stage right with the ideas, the smarts, and the scrappiness to put things right. Alan Mullaly. Carroll Shelby. Lee Iacocca. Andrew Carnegie. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Bart Simpson. Sergio Marchionne does not likely view himself with Moses-like optics, but the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently gave a remarkable, perhaps prophetic interview with Automotive News about his interest and the inevitability of merging with a potential automotive partner like General Motors. Marchionne has been overtly public about his notion that GM must merge with FCA. For a bit of context, GM sold 9.9 million vehicles in 2014, posting $2.8 billion in net income, while FCA sold 4.75 million units and earned $2.4 billion in net income, painting a very rosy FCA earnings-to-sales picture. But that's not the entire picture. Most people in the auto industry still remember the trainwreck that was the DaimlerChrysler "merger" written in what turned out to be sand in 1998. It proved to be a master class in how not to fuse two companies, two cultures, two continents, and two management teams. Oh, it worked for the two individuals at both helms pre-merger. They got silly rich. And the industry itself was in a misty romance at the time with mergers and acquisitions. BMW bought Rolls-Royce. Volkswagen Group bought Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini, putting all three brands into their rightful place in both products and positioning. No marriages there, so no false pretense. Finally, Nissan and Renault got married in 1999. A successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust. But a successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust, the principle part being honesty. Daimler and Chrysler lied to each other. The heads of each unit, the product planners, and finance all presented their then-current and long-range forecasts to each other with less-than-forthright accuracy. Daimler was the far greater equal and no one from the Chrysler side enjoyed that. The cultures were entirely different, too, and little was done to bridge that gap. Which brings me back to the present overtures by Marchionne to GM. "There are varying degrees of hugs," Marchionne stated in the Automotive News piece. "I can hug you nicely, I can hug you tightly, I can hug you like a bear, I can really hug you." Seriously?