[suzq044]

There are 25 product announcements planned within the next 18 months, and it all starts on June 8th.

See the biggest thing here -- to me, anyway -- is that he's not necessarily even talking exclusively about Ram. Sure, that's where he started, but I really don't think they're gonna put out more than 2, maybe 3 Rams. At least in the US. "Dakota" + Trim levels; Ramcharger + trim levels. They could be bringing a Pacifica to the ProMaster line. They could make a 1500 Power Wagon. Like-- there's a LOT of things they could do with just trim levels that they'd count as "25 product announcements" - this is announcements. Not production of them, mind you. Could be a whole lotta maybe and a whole lotta nothin but hot air.

 

[DCXcarbuilder]

Last week, Ram Trucks boss Tim Kuniskis posted some exciting news on his Linkedin profile – stating that the all-truck label will be introducing 25 product announcements in the next 18 months. The first of those announcements is planned for June 8th and today, we take a look at what Kuniskis and the Ram Trucks ... Read more

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I feel the greatest announcement to start things off would be that Ram was being rolled back into Dodge, “Dodge Trucks are Ram tough”

 

[suzq044]

I feel the greatest announcement to start things off would be that Ram was being rolled back into Dodge, “Dodge Trucks are Ram tough”

Not until they fix the quality issues

And it's been like 15yrs we can get over that little molehill, IMO. It's like people trying to hang onto the Hemi that is even older just because engine shape. Exhaust noise. Rawr.

 

[DCXcarbuilder]

Not until they fix the quality issues

And it's been like 15yrs we can get over that little molehill, IMO. It's like people trying to hang onto the Hemi that is even older just because engine shape. Exhaust noise. Rawr.

I think Ram as part of Dodge would be a stronger Brand than they are separately, think of Ford or Chevy splitting off their trucks as a separate brand. The Ford or Chevy brand that‘s left would appear much weaker. And quality needs to be fixed everywhere no matter how the brands are structured. Just my opinion. And as far as hanging on to Hemi I think is more hanging on to a V8, so they just go to Ford or Chevy to get what they want. I would have had a few years of overlap with Hemi and the inline six to let people compare and maybe be impressed, or not but then a decision could be made based on the take rate for each engine.

 

[tomaz]

I think Ram as part of Dodge would be a stronger Brand than they are separately, think of Ford or Chevy splitting off their trucks as a separate brand. The Ford or Chevy brand that‘s left would appear much weaker. And quality needs to be fixed everywhere no matter how the brands are structured. Just my opinion. And as far as hanging on to Hemi I think is more hanging on to a V8, so they just go to Ford or Chevy to get what they want. I would have had a few years of overlap with Hemi and the inline six to let people compare and maybe be impressed, or not but then a decision could be made based on the take rate for each engine.

It really wouldn’t matter if they all are sold under the same roof…

 

[valiant67]

It really wouldn’t matter if they all are sold under the same roof…

There would be synergy of the single brand. Advertising overall would be less. We wouldn’t be watching Dodge fumble its way to irrelevance.

 

[Erik Latranyi]

And it's been like 15yrs we can get over that little molehill, IMO. It's like people trying to hang onto the Hemi that is even older just because engine shape. Exhaust noise. Rawr.

Same with the 'revive Plymouth' nonsense....or Imperial.....or Eagle....or, or, or, or

 

[Doug D]

It really wouldn’t matter if they all are sold under the same roof…

But it does matter. They are all under one roof now, but across different brands. Buyers are finicky. A Chrysler buyer might not necessarily consider a Dodge model or back in the day, Plymouth and vice versa. But a Dodge car owner might consider a Dodge truck or Dodge minivan or another Dodge sedan when in the market.

Aldo pointed this out long ago. A buyer could grow through the brand - start with a small sedan and as life changes occur step up to a mid-size sedan to a minivan and maybe a truck (if/when needed) and stay within the brand. Win-win for the consumer and manufacturer. Can't do that now. All Chrysler has is a minivan, Dodge has the Charger and Durango, but no small sedans, Ram is just light duty and heavy duty trucks - no opportunity for growth within the brand. Jeep is the only one where it may be possible. But not everyone wants a Jeep.

A consumer can grow within the brand with Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia ,etc, but not with Dodge, Chrysler or Ram. Jeep should only be Wrangler's and maybe the Grand Cherokee. The rest should have been Chrysler's or Dodge's.

I remember in 1992 when we purchased a new Acclaim. Plymouth had the Sundance, Acclaim, Voyager and Grand Voyager in the lineup. I didn't have to consider another make at all (unless I wanted/needed a truck). Dodge had Ram, Dakota, Intrepid, Spirit and Duster if I recall correctly. Chrysler had Le Baron and T&C.

 

[DCXcarbuilder]

Same with the 'revive Plymouth' nonsense....or Imperial.....or Eagle....or, or, or, or

I feel it would NOT be the same as those brands no longer exist, Ram and Dodge both exist and I think Dodge would be a stronger brand with Ram as they add new vehicles to both. Again, think of Ford or Chevy as a brand without their trucks. All just opinion.

 

[GasAxe]

It really wouldn’t matter if they all are sold under the same roof…

If it doesn’t matter, why fight the Dodge Truck legacy and synergy (ugh, I admit, just saying it sounds like an ill advised 90’s merger presentation. 😜). In the end, I don’t expect real leadership from Stellantis to make adjustments to the brands no matter how disorganized the product lineup ends up being.

 

[Dave Z]

They should never have been sold under the same roof to begin with, it just made the problems worse. it was supposed to allow each brand to live independently.

 

[David S]

Same with the 'revive Plymouth' nonsense....or Imperial.....or Eagle....or, or, or, or

They are all excuses for getting a full lineup without throwing out the stupid Fiat marketing for Dodge and Chrysler.

Throw out the "brotherhood of muslce" and we don't need Plymouth and Eagle.

Throw out the "people mover/ BEV brand" and we don't need Imperial.

 

[suzq044]

I think Ram as part of Dodge would be a stronger Brand than they are separately, think of Ford or Chevy splitting off their trucks as a separate brand.

Maybe if Dodge doesn't get more product, sure. But otherwise, Ram is doing pretty well on its own. At this point I think it'd be a pointless and possibly expensive thing to do. From a marketing standpoint, Ram stands on its own; Dodge is equivalent to overgrown muscle-heads that don't seem to understand that things change; that and younger idiots doing street-takeovers in stolen v8 Chargers & Challengers. Not a great time to change Ram to Dodge. Not until the quality issues (and apparent-ease-of-theft) is fixed.

The Ford or Chevy brand that‘s left would appear much weaker. And quality needs to be fixed everywhere no matter how the brands are structured. Just my opinion. And as far as hanging on to Hemi I think is more hanging on to a V8, so they just go to Ford or Chevy to get what they want. I would have had a few years of overlap with Hemi and the inline six to let people compare and maybe be impressed, or not but then a decision could be made based on the take rate for each engine.

Chevy & Ford are not Dodge & Ram.

What is it about the v8 that people like? Just bragging rights? Because 8 is bigger number than 6? Like a 1/3 is bigger than a 1/4 but somehow people think a 1/3 is less than 1/4 because the number is smaller. Sure it's got a couple less cylinders; but from what I read it's better in every other metric. I haven't had the opportunity to drive one yet.

I think people just need to get used to it. They knew there was gonna be blowback from losing the v8 but it is antiquated thanks to the fact (outside of the SRT's) CDJR never updates anything unless they have to.

 

[GasAxe]

They should never have been sold under the same roof to begin with, it just made the problems worse. it was supposed to allow each brand to live independently.

On the face of it, it sounds good to have all brands under one roof to showcase each brands identity, but the reality is the lack of discipline on brand identity and desire to chase margins muddled any meaningful progression a customer would have buying up through the brands. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised with the outcome given the aim was to shoehorn Fiat and Alfa Romeo into NA no matter what.

 

[suzq044]

They are all excuses for getting a full lineup without throwing out the stupid Fiat marketing for Dodge and Chrysler.

Throw out the "brotherhood of muslce" and we don't need Plymouth and Eagle.

Throw out the "people mover/ BEV brand" and we don't need Imperial.

Brotherhood of Muscle can stay. JMO. It's a successful tagline, and maybe - just maybe, they just need more cars that actually represent that. Because what they effectively did was shoot themselves in the foot with their planning. "Brotherhood of muscle" comes out, fastforward a few years, Hornet is introduced, and is little more than a bumper-engineered Alfa and it shows, thus why people won't buy it. Not to mention it's not very muscley - hmm... then we have LX finally getting put out of its misery (20yrs later) for - an EV. And instead of really embracing the electric part of it and making it a screamer, they gave it a fake pseudo-v8 exhaust noise (who were they trying to fool with that?) and "good enough" performance. Nobody cares how loud it can get if it isn't pleasing to listen to. (I have only heard it start up & at "idle", mind you, but still).

Chrysler isn't anything more than a minivan right now. So while it SHOULD have been the BEV brand, taking the Wagoneer S & the BEV Charger as a Chrysler variant, it wasn't. It was a concept car and .. a bunch of minivans. It can be whatever they want to make it into at this point. It's nearly blank-slate. I don't care about the Halcyon - by the time they come out with another concept car that's more production ready, the styling of the now-year-old halcyon will be dated. The fact they keep talking about this concept car worries me in that it makes it seem like they really DON'T have more .. anything coming.

 

[Dave Z]

The way to do this properly would have been to have full lines for Dodge and Chrysler, as they almost did when Fiat showed up in the first place, and tune properly for each brand - Chrysler would be comfort-tuned and more traditional in appearance, while Dodge would be sport-tuned. Really, it does work better with Plymouth in place, but still, it would work.

One problem was greed with wanting to really cash in on Jeep's reputation, which is now somewhat less than it used to be, to the point that three other companies are working on taking away the Wrangler's supremacy in its little world (which got a lot bigger). Jeep got a lot bigger.

Ram as a separate division made some sense, but there was no reason to make that public. I still don't buy the idea that Sergio was planning to sell Ram separately. I think it was exactly what he said, an organizational method that translated to the public when they freed up new VIN codes. He did make Mopar and SRT brands, too. It was the Fiat way.

I am disappointed in Tavares largely because he failed to do this. He had presided over it in Europe, with Opel (NOT Opal) brought into the fold as Dodge was brought into Chrysler: Opels were phased out in favor of disguised Peugeots. That's fine. Each car variant was optimized in sales across three brands appealing to different people. That is not a terrible way to work. Hyundai and Kia and Genesis manage it. Toyota/Lexus does it. Chevy-Buick-Cadillac does it. Dodge-Chrysler could have done it, too, with Jeep participating in some areas.

Instead... what a mess, and it's not going to get better as long as Fiat is in charge, which is as long as Elkann is involved.

 

[GasAxe]

Stellantis management is the stereotypical disingenuous empty suit. They crow over strong brand identity yet continue to cave to “good enough”.

 

[suzq044]

Stellantis management is the stereotypical disingenuous empty suit. They crow over strong brand identity yet continue to cave to “good enough”.

What I see is someone who's doing the easiest thing to make a buck.

Why is Jeep getting everything? Because it's already an international brand. It's styling is instantly recognizable. Regardless of what you drive, most drivers aren't ashamed of driving a Jeep. No matter where they are in the world.

The problem is where we're at now. Wrangler is not gonna be king of the hill anymore. It's not going to be the bar that is set. It is going to have to actively compete with more than appearance packages for the first time in a looong time. Not since the 60s, I think - were other brands actively trying to nudge it off the pedestal. Right now it looks like Toyota is looking at it now, too. Because they know they'll be able to steal buyers from Jeep. 100% - because of the quality issues CDJR has had - especially in the electronics arena, despite uConnect still being one of the best systems in the industry. Toyota has the advantage of being known as the quality-having machine. Who wouldn't want both quality & performance, especially when Toyota could probably do it for cheaper since Jeep has upticked their pricing so much over the last 5 years.

 

[Dave Z]

Toyota can also do it cheaper because they have the internal skills - Toyota hasn't done layoff after layoff after layoff - and can amortize over the entire globe, for realsies. Including Africa.

 

[David S]

Brotherhood of Muscle can stay. JMO. It's a successful tagline, and maybe - just maybe, they just need more cars that actually represent that. Because what they effectively did was shoot themselves in the foot with their planning. "Brotherhood of muscle" comes out, fastforward a few years, Hornet is introduced, and is little more than a bumper-engineered Alfa and it shows, thus why people won't buy it. Not to mention it's not very muscley - hmm... then we have LX finally getting put out of its misery (20yrs later) for - an EV. And instead of really embracing the electric part of it and making it a screamer, they gave it a fake pseudo-v8 exhaust noise (who were they trying to fool with that?) and "good enough" performance. Nobody cares how loud it can get if it isn't pleasing to listen to. (I have only heard it start up & at "idle", mind you, but still).

Chrysler isn't anything more than a minivan right now. So while it SHOULD have been the BEV brand, taking the Wagoneer S & the BEV Charger as a Chrysler variant, it wasn't. It was a concept car and .. a bunch of minivans. It can be whatever they want to make it into at this point. It's nearly blank-slate. I don't care about the Halcyon - by the time they come out with another concept car that's more production ready, the styling of the now-year-old halcyon will be dated. The fact they keep talking about this concept car worries me in that it makes it seem like they really DON'T have more .. anything coming.

If 0-60 in 5.3-6.3 seconds is too slow to be in the "brotherhood of muscle" then the "brotherhood of muscle" must die.

Either Dodge needs to be selling economy models that go 0-60 in 8.0 seconds or they need to revive Plymouth. Chrysler cannot occupy that space.

Dodge Hornet 0-60 Times

View verified Dodge Hornet 0-60 times, 1/4 mile times, and other performance specs based on 7 tests from popular car magazine sources.

www.0-60specs.com

So long as BEVs do not make up 20% of the market Stellantis should not have a BEV brand in the US. Now that HEV+PHEV+BEV make up 20% of the market they should have made Chrysler an electrified MHEV+HEV+PHEV+BEV brand.