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Chrysler-Fiat quality chief out after another poor Consumer Reports showing

Fiat Chrysler has announced a management change following the company's woeful performance in the latest Consumer Reports Annual Auto Reliability Survey. Of the 28 brands surveyed, FCA's marques occupied the five the seven lowest scores, while Dodge, Ram, Jeep and Fiat were the four lowest scorers.
Doug Betts, FCA's 51-year-old head of quality "left the company to pursue other interests," which, considering the aforementioned paragraph, means he was sacked. According to Automotive News, Betts joined Chrysler in 2007, defecting from Nissan, and, insiders report, had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with new boss Sergio Marchionne.
His replacement is the newly promoted Matthew Lidane (shown at inset), who was formerly VP of systems and components. Lidane has been at Chrysler since 1987 and was previously chief engineer of the Jeep product team as well as the vehicle line boss for the compact US wide platform which (ironically) underpins two of FCA's lowest scoring vehicles, the Dodge Dart and Jeep Cherokee.

Fiat set to invest $12B on new models, stop Euro losses in 3 years

Naturally, you'd expect a massive automaker like Fiat to have an in-depth plan to exit the current European-market doldrums, and you'd expect that plan to include plenty of new vehicles to attract those precious buyers that still remain despite the financial downturn. And you'd be right, though Fiat does seem to have a few unexpected twists up its corporate sleeve.
Perhaps the biggest shocker is a report that Fiat will completely drop the Punto, a car with mass-market appeal aimed at small-car buyers cross-shopping the popular Volkswagen Polo. Its replacement will be a five-door Fiat 500 aimed at upmarket buyers (sounds awfully similar to the 500L) that will be built in Poland. Lower-end customers will reportedly be served by variants of the Fiat Panda.
Borrowing a page from the BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen playbook, reports Automotive News, Fiat is said to have plans to reignite production at its Italian factories by retooling them to build high-end vehicles from Maserati and Alfa Romeo. These will be marketed as premium products, built by skilled Italian workers (who are paid wages that are 75-percent higher than those building Fiats in Poland), and will be sold around the world.

New Fiat 500 Abarth confirmed, reveal coming in November

Though it's been absent from America for a few years, the Fiat 500 continues on overseas. But the line has been strangely split. The main 500 is a recently redesigned car from the ground up, and is electric only. Meanwhile, the 500 Abarth has survived, but it's still mostly the same car introduced more than a decade ago. And the obvious question has been, will there be a new one? The answer is yes. And we're going to see it soon. The past couple of weeks, Abarth has been sharing teasers about a new product. Two of those teasers were very explicit. On Monday, it announced the product would be a new 500 Abarth, and it would be shown on November 22. And on Tuesday, it showed a glimpse of the car, which is shown at top (original teaser post below). This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Looking closely, we can see that this new Abarth is based on the electric 500. It has the same headlights that are split by the hood about 75% of the way up. It also has the circular turn signals with body color inserts. Combined with the vivid lime green and humming, electrical noises in the background, we have to assume that the new Abarth will be battery powered. Assuming the electric Abarth follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, it should have more aggressive styling, sportier suspension, and likely extra horsepower.  We won't have long to learn more with the reveal just a couple of weeks away. It's also likely going to fuel our desire to have the Fiat 500 return to America, since it offers a lot of style and solid range for not a lot of money. A part of us holds out hope that Fiat will bring it here, since according to the L.A. Auto Show press conference schedule, Fiat has a conference. We genuinely don't know what will be announced, but it sure would be great timing to announce the electric 500 for America and then drop a hot version a week later. Or it could just be a 500X update. We'll find that out even sooner. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Autoblog Short Cut: Fiat 500 Abarth Hot Lap