Fiat and quality: the good news

Allpar forums member jorisr wrote the following, which seemed worth reproducing (with his permission):

To offer a little assurance.

In Europe Fiat group vehicles have for a long time had a well deserved reputation for being less than perfectly reliable. During the 1990s and early 2000s they were much improved but still lagged most of their competitors (Peugeot/Citroën and Renault were still worse, Opel and Ford had a bad decade), but their engines have generally been exceptionally good.

If you look at what happened at Fiat since Marchionne took over and World Class Manufacturing (WCM) was introduced, it is rather impressive.

For instance the reliability numbers on the Fiat Panda. This model was introduced in 2003 and was built in Tychy, Poland. There is a huge improvement since the implementation of WCM in the reliability stats from, for instance, the German ADAC.
The Panda went from poor (which would be reasonable as it was a completely new model) to best in class.

At the moment it is widely considered the most reliable car in its class and even overall it is in the top three.

Every car built in this plant at this moment has a stellar reputation in reliability and building quality. (Fiat Panda, Fiat 500 and Ford Ka)

The same improvement can be seen in the Fiat Punto that was introduced in 2004. The numbers for this car improved dramatically in the last couple of years as did numbers for the previous Punto that was still being sold alongside the new model in significant numbers untill 2009. (ADAC rated the Punto third in its class behind the Fiat Panda and a Toyota).

Another example of the improving quality are the test results in the German 100,000 km tests, where they test the car for 100,000 km and afterwards they completely dismantle the car and they have an expert examaning every detail of every part of the car. The older Fiat products would score average at best.

The Germans love to put down the French and Italian competition where they can. They certainly favor their homegrown stuff. Recently however they couldn’t look away when several Volkswagens where absolutely dismal, and the bottom ranks are all filled with VWs and a couple of Peugeots and Citröens.

The most recent Fiats, however, are among the best on the list. The 1.3 JTDm diesel engine was recently called by the DEKRA expert “one of the best engines he ever had under his measuring device.” This even after the German testers decided to try out if the Italian diesel would have problems if they filled it up with gasoline. (The tolerances measured after 100,000 km were like new on this little engine)

You can definately see a correlation in the WCM rating a plant has and the quality of the vehicles they make.

The highest rated plants deliver vehicles that rate among the best in the marketplace, be it Japanese, Korean or German/American.

It’s easy to see the plant with the worst results (still not bad but middle of the road) is the plant that only recently was converted to WCM (Pomigliano d’Arco- Alfa Romeo 159 and 147).

So if even Fiat can get to Best in Class reliability within 5 years, Chrysler’s plants will be able to do at least the same.

Marchionne knows that this is the absolute base condition for success for a company known for unreliability (as Fiat was, and until people catch up, still is).

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Patience, please!

People sometimes write to me and demand to know why Chrysler is so slow to adopt their favorite technology.

Much of the time, I agree that what they want is reasonable. Like diesel engines – I’d love to see diesels in the 200/Avenger or Wrangler or Ram 1500. Especially those VM Motori diesels they use in Europe, or, for the Ram, those new Cummins models that apparently only the U.S. Government is using.

But let’s take a quick look at Chrysler.

For nine years they suffered under Daimler’s “cut it, then cut it again, then cut it again” mentality. Then they went under Cerberus’ knife and even the Pentastar V6 nearly bought the farm — as far as I can tell, it was saved by press coverage.

So here’s what Chrysler is hurrying to get ready:

* Pentastar V6 Variants: direct injection, MDS, turbocharged, twin turbocharged, and possibly 3-liter high-mileage or economy versions
* New transmissions: nine speed and eight speed — apparently in just about every vehicle they make
* World Engine rebuild — as far as we can tell, essentially scrapping most of the top of the engine and starting over
* Federalized Fiat engines (1.4, 1.4 turbo)
* Power/efficiency upgrades for the Hemi V8s
* MultiAir implementation
* Viper V10 upgrades

It’s quite likely the engineers are also working on a V8 version of the Pentastar V6, as well — or at least some sort of replacement for the Hemi, to debut a few years down the road. No engine family lasts forever.

(As for MultiAir, it’s hard to tell how much of its implementation is political vs engineering, especially on the variable cam engines.)

At the same time, they’re working on all those new Fiat designs, replacing the compact cars, the midsized cars, the Liberty, the Journey… working on the minivan replacements for 2014… and presumably bringing over large vans and investigating class 6-8 trucks. That’s not to mention the Dakota replacement, Wrangler pickup, etc.

So if there’s no Wrangler diesel next year, I won’t be surprised, nor will I be upset. A decimated engineering crew joined by a large number of probably-inexperienced newcomers is doing amazing work, but they’re all still human. Give them time and be patient; between the engineering, debugging, testing, refinement, re-testing, and certification, these things take a lot of time and money. On the lighter side, we may be looking at several years of marked improvements — our reward for having to endure a decade of disappointments?