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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?"

Hellcat no help to Fiat-Chrysler's bottom-of-the-pile mpg average

What, you expected the "fastest muscle car ever" to help fleetwide fuel economy? Nope, don't think that's going to happen. That means Fiat Chrysler will likely to continue to languish at the bottom of the heap when it comes to fleetwide fuel economy among the largest automakers serving the US, especially as the automaker starts to sell its Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. A few hundred Fiat 500E electric vehicles aren't going to turn the trend around. See, Chrysler has once again finished at the bottom of the list when it came to fleetwide fuel economy among automakers for 2014 model-year vehicles, according to a preliminary study by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Chrysler and Fiat had an average of 21.1 miles per gallon. That substantially lagged the overall 24.2 mpg average, but it was an increase from the company's 20.9 mpg average last year and the 20.1 mpg average two years prior. For 2014, General Motors had the second-worst fleetwide fuel economy at an even 22 mpg. Fiat Chrysler does say it's working on improving its fuel economy, according to Automotive News. The company plans on making its inline-four-cylinder and V6 engines smaller, and will sell more vehicles with eight- and nine-speed transmissions. Heck, there's even a plug-in hybrid version of the Chrysler Town & Country minivan in the works for late 2015, and the company can tout fuel-efficiency gains with the Chrysler 200 and Jeep Cherokee. We would be remiss if we didn't note that, compared to its muscle-car forefathers, the Hellcat actually performs pretty well at the pump. Last month, word got out that the 2015 Challenger Hellcat, equipped either with a six-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic transmission, got a combined fuel economy of 16 mpg. Heck, the automatic-tranny version got 22 mpg on the highway. And that's for a car with 707 horsepower and a 10-second quarter-mile time. Still, with the pedal floored, the car can burn a gallon and a half of fuel per minute. Ouch.

Dodge says three new variants of the Charger and Challenger are on their way

Introduced in 2008, the current Dodge Challenger is one of the oldest new cars on the American market. It's not ready to retire, and documents published by Canadian union Unifor confirm it will remain in production until at least 2023. Better yet, the company announced it will release several new versions of the car in the coming years. Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) narrowly avoided a costly strike by signing a new three-year agreement with Unifor, the union that represents most of its Canadian workers. It pledged to inject $1.58 billion Canadian (about $1.2 billion U.S.) into its local operations while creating 2,000 new jobs in the nation. Some of that money will be allocated to the Brampton Assembly factory located on the outskirts of Toronto, where it will be used to build three new variants of Dodge's Charger and Challenger models. Details about what the company has in store weren't included in the release, but Dodge has shown it's capable of mustering an unusually high level of creativity when it comes to keeping the Challenger and the Charger fresh. Hellcat, Demon, T/A 392, and Super Stock models have joined the range in recent years, and its efforts have paid off, as 60,997 units of the Challenger were sold in the United States in 2019. It even outsold the Camaro and the Mustang during the third quarter of the year. Annual Charger sales jumped by 21% to 96,935 units in 2019. With that said, Dodge's definition of a new variant is murky. It could be alluding to a trim level, an option package, a limited-edition model, or a face-lifted version. Regardless, we're betting they'll be exceptionally powerful. Chrysler will continue to build the 300 in Brampton through 2023, too, but there's no word on what the future has in store for the sedan. It's also relatively old, but it's not faring nearly as well as its Dodge-badged siblings. Sales fell to 29,213 units in 2019, a 37% drop compared to 2018, and the lineup was pared down for 2021. Moving west, the Windsor factory will be retooled to build plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, and it will be assigned at least one new model, but FCA didn't reveal what it will be, or when we'll see it. Industry whisperings claim that's where the production version of the CES-friendly Chrysler Portal concept will be built.