FCA Canada’s $3.7-billion overhaul of its Windsor, Ont., minivan plant has created 1,200 new jobs, a sign that Canada will have an important role in Fiat Chrysler NV’s future as it restructures its operations.
The company revealed its new Pacifica minivan, built in Windsor, to some Canadian audience for the first time Thursday at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto.
The Pacifica fits well into the parent company’s new means of building more pickups, SUVs and crossovers at the expense of passenger cars, said Reid Bigland, chief executive of FCA Canada.
The corporate overhaul features a intend to kill the smaller Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 in response as to the CEO Sergio Marchionne believes is a “permanent shift” from passenger cars.
This might have been troubling news to Fiat Chrysler’s workers in Brampton, Ont., who build the Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger and Chrysler 300 sedans.
But Bigland pledged Thursday that “Brampton is steady as she goes.”
“With respect towards the full-sized vehicles and particularly the more muscle-car oriented (vehicles), certainly the advantage of low fuel prices plays directly into those vehicles’ wheelhouses,” Bigland said, adding that demand for them is stronger of computer has ever been.
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When asked if the company’s big-car-and-truck strategy could backfire if gasoline prices rise again, Bigland said he isn’t worried.
“I think the fallacy out there happens when fuel prices are up, people want small cars, and that’s not the case,” said Bigland, who’s also Fiat Chrysler’s head of U.S. sales and head of the Alfa Romeo brand in The united states.
“What people want is fuel-efficient vehicles – so the real key is to create large vehicles more relevant for a $4-a-gallon gasoline environment.”
Bigland pointed to the hybrid form of the Pacifica, which gets 2.9 litres per 100 kilometres, saying “it does not get any more fuel-efficient than that.”
Chrysler, prior to being bought by Fiat during the economic crisis, struggled to adapt to changing consumer tastes when big SUVs and pickup trucks fell out of favour in the mid-2000s as oil prices rose.
It appears the company might be making the same mistake again, said Micheline Maynard, a long-time transportation reporter and author of The End of Detroit: The way the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market.
“They don’t genuinely have a car gene, that’s the problem,” Maynard said inside a recent interview.
“The more you focus on SUVs and pickup trucks, and also the more the company Chrysler is identified with big vehicles, greater it will be, when the market turns, for Fiat Chrysler to convince people that they are concerned about fuel efficiency.”
Financial Post
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