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FCA CEO Mike Manley will run Americas for Stellantis after PSA merger

DETROIT — Fiat Chrysler CEO Mike Manley will run operations in the Americas when his company merges with FranceÂ’s PSA Peugeot early next year. FCA Chairman John Elkann announced ManleyÂ’s new post on Friday in a letter to employees. ManleyÂ’s role in the merged company had been a mystery. PSA CEO Carlos Tavares will run the overall company, to be named Stellantis. Shareholders of both companies will vote on the merger Jan. 4 to seal the deal creating the worldÂ’s fourth-largest automaker. The merger is expected to be completed by the end of March. PSA will get six seats on the new companyÂ’s 11-member board, which will be chaired by Elkann. The Americas, especially the U.S., are key to the new companyÂ’s success. Fiat ChryslerÂ’s Jeep and Ram brands are highly profitable, and Tavares has long wanted to sell PSA vehicles in the U.S. Manley has been the Italian-American automakerÂ’s CEO for 2 1/2 years, taking over when Sergio Marchionne died in 2018. Stellantis will have the capacity to produce 8.7 million cars a year, just behind Volkswagen, the Renault-Nissan alliance and Toyota. Related Video: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Chrysler Dodge Fiat Jeep RAM Citroen Peugeot Mike Manley Stellantis

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.

FCA worker in Indiana tests for coronavirus, but the plant will stay open

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said Thursday that an employee has tested positive for COVID-19 at its Kokomo, Indiana, transmission plant, but the location will remain open. The Italian-American automaker said the company placed the employee and his immediate co-workers and others he may have come into direct contact with in home quarantine. The automaker said it is “deploying additional sanitization measures across the entire facility, re-timing break times to avoid crowding and deploying social spacing.” Fiat Chrysler is canceling all in-person meetings unless “business critical” and conducted meetings through video conferencing technologies. Automakers also have canceled non-essential travel. Ford, meanwhile, said its plants in North America remain unaffected. General Motors spokesman Jim Cain said the Detroit automaker has not had any cases of the coronavirus in its North American plants yet, citing such measures as reduced travel and restricted entry to plants as helping. How the No. 1 U.S. automaker would respond to a positive test would depend on the situation, he added. “You do plan to operate with a certain amount of absenteeism, but every facility has a different operating plan,” he said. The Fiat side of the FCA operation, meanwhile,  is temporarily halting operations at some plants in Italy and will reduce production rates in response to coronavirus in the country, the largest outbreak in Europe, a spokesman for the automaker said on Wednesday. FCA said in a statement it had stepped up measures across its facilities, including intensive sanitation of all work and rest areas, to support the government's directives to curb the spread of the infectious disease. "As a result of taking these actions the company will, where necessary, make temporary closures of its plants across Italy," it said. The spokesman said affected plants were Pomigliano, Melfi, Atessa and Cassino, each of them halted for two or three days between Wednesday and Saturday. FCA said that to allow greater spacing of employees at their workstations, "daily production rates will be lowered to accommodate the adapted manufacturing processes." However, a source close to the matter said FCA did not expect an impact on overall production rates. The source added that temporary closures were in no way linked to disruptions of auto parts supplies following anti-virus measures imposed by Rome all over Italy.