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Ram, Jeep redesigns on hold, Alfa Romeo models may come sooner

Last summer, FCA outlined an ambitious five-year plan that sketched out the company's product intentions for each of its brands through the end of 2018. However, even the best strategies sometimes need tweaking. According to Reuters after speaking with unnamed people at auto suppliers, FCA is now possibly delaying at least a dozen projects in North America for a variety of reasons. From vehicle to vehicle, these postponements allegedly last anywhere from just a few months to over a year. The sources from the suppliers claim that in some cases these tweaks are for engineering and design changes. The next-gen Ram 1500 reportedly has among the shorter delays and is being pushed from mid-2017 to November 2017, according to Reuters. Also, the much-discussed future Jeep Wrangler is allegedly moving a little later to July 2017. Among the vehicles purportedly seeing longer delays, the next-gen Grand Cherokee could get pushed back about a year to 2018. That then forces the launch of the three-row, luxury Grand Wagoneer to be even further away. Jeep's upcoming C-segment CUV and the all-new Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, and Challenger might also see postponements. The one brand allegedly seeing an accelerated plan is Alfa Romeo. Without going into detail, the sources from these suppliers claim that the Italian automaker is getting even more vehicles for its lineup and could get them even faster than planned. "Those plans need to be flexible and fluid, with the potential to add some vehicles, pull some forward and extend the life cycle of others," FCA said to Reuters about all of these allegations. "We look at these programs on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis." Investment in the auto industry has been a major topic for FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne as of late. He believes consolidation is necessary so that companies aren't burning money on the same projects. Related Video: News Source: ReutersImage Credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images Plants/Manufacturing Alfa Romeo Chrysler Dodge Fiat Jeep RAM Sergio Marchionne FCA fca us

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?

Is Ram bringing a trick tailgate to the Chicago Auto Show?

Last week featured running jokes and mirth on truck Twitter. It started when the GMC account played off the Super Bowl, posting a short video that started with the caption, "The Rams already lost." Then came a picture of a current Ram tailgate, followed by a short pictorial demonstration of the six-function MultiPro tailgate available on the GMC Sierra (pictured). Ram responded with a pigskin play of its own, calling GMC out for a false start and requesting everyone "Check back with us on 2/7/19." That is the first media day of the Chicago Auto Show. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The easy inference is that Ram has plans to reveal a clever tailgate of its own. The easy question is, will it be the split tailgate we first saw in a patent application in 2014, then in spy photos in 2017? That patent application detailed a gate split down the middle, with a traditional handle on the left-side door. The entire unit could open like a standard tailgate, or, each half could fold down like a tailgate as well as swing out like a door. The Honda Ridgeline has a similar option, but not being split, the Ridgeline's whole tailgate swings out like a door. Another novel feature of the Ram patent application was that the doors could be operated with a touchpad. When spy photographers caught a 2020 Ram prototype in Detroit with a split tailgate, the split was no longer 50/50, but about 65/35. After snapping the silver truck that day, the split tailgate was never seen again. Thursday in Chicago might be the day that changes, since it's fair to expect Ram to show something that will get the 1500 current with proliferating tailgate trickery. GMC and Ram weren't finished, though. The Ram 1500 won the Motor Trend Truck of the Year award at the Detroit Auto Show, and two hours after GMC's first tweet, GMC got around to sending this bit of congratulations: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.