https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2025/09/11/stellantis-ceo-antonio-filosa-sales-future/86090926007/

 

Until he builds credibility with customers nothing else matters

 

Honestly,everything matters. A three legged approach. Quality, customer satisfaction (dealer and corporate),and products people want to buy.

 

Unless those investors are buying Stellantis vehicles, these articles mean nothing. Just fluff and more promises of coming product. The same promises that went unfulfilled the last decade. At this point talk means nothing.

 

9% uptick in share prices yesterday after his comments means something, i assure you...stla p/e ratio otherwise seems to indicate or 'discount for'

bankruptcy-death WITHIN 3 years. :-(

 

Until he builds credibility with customers nothing else matters

Unless those investors are buying Stellantis vehicles, these articles mean nothing. Just fluff and more promises of coming product. The same promises that went unfulfilled the last decade. At this point talk means nothing.

You can't build credibility with customers until you address your product line and dealer network. It "appears" that is what Filosa is doing.

And if you read the article, it is more than "promises of coming product". As a matter of fact, he only mentions one product. The rest is addressing issues many of you on this forum wished STLA addressed. You guys are brutal...lol
I understand the recent history, but c'mon, cut the guy some slack...

 

They aren't doing well in the arena of public trust. he didn't really spend time on those details.
If they were serious in repairing their image it would not just be new products.
It would be longer warranties across the lineup. It would be parts availability. It would be the end of delaying/denying legitimate warranty claims. It would be tiger teams attacking the worst quality offenders (PHEV Stellantis vehicles I'm looking at you). It would be an extended warranty, not just a TSB, on the Pentastar camshaft. And so on...
So far it is mostly talk - and talk is cheap.

 

Perspective. Also my usual note that Wall Street is made of gamblers who bet using fragmentary data and believe anything CEOs and presidents say. Example: when Tesla said it would give Elon Musk $1 trillion, the stock went up, though that kind of a donation would kill the company.

 

Perspective. Also my usual note that Wall Street is made of gamblers who bet using fragmentary data and believe anything CEOs and presidents say. Example: when Tesla said it would give Elon Musk $1 trillion, the stock went up, though that kind of a donation would kill the company.

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And this in a bull market!

Imagine how STLA stock will do when the market crashes, which the experts say is now inevitable.

 

A 10 year/100k mile powertrain warranty would be a nice step, but something tells me they (Stella) know they'd go bankrupt paying for all those warranty claims if they went that route.

They need a lifetime warranty at this point.

Clearly they know the Peugeot/DS models won't cross pollinate, and the Fiat/AR re-skins/re-badges have been a failure.
There has to be a legitimate reinvestment Chrysler to play in the segments that it exited out of under FCA/Stella.
Chrysler needs Trax, Equinox, and Traverse competitors. Push the 300 nameplate upmarket and base it off the current Charger. Chrysler needs a new Pacifica, with the Voyager being based off the current Pacifica refresh.
It has to be a serious long term investment, and stay the course...because it is going to take a decade or two to fix, not a quick 2-3 year fix.

IMO they should have done the cross pollination years ago and the new codeveloped product should have been entering the market by now. There's been mismanagement since 1998, but it got turned up to 11 in 2015 after the failure of the Dart and 200 and ramped up to 110 when Stella became the parent.

 

We've seen how it goes.

 

"THE CLAWWWW"

 

Good morning, watched a 15 sec. (maybe 30) commercial about a new 2025 car the other day & absolutely no mention of any attributes of the vehicle, it's crazy.
MOPAR Always ! 🤞

 

What I've generally wanted is specifics on their methods, as valiant wrote. Not just "we're improving quality." Gotta tell us how, now. A few inspectors in white boiler suits are not going to help much.

Commercials solely based on emotion do work, though they can also alienate people who see through their themes or find the constant power turns to be a turnoff. I'm more concerned about everything else

Other automakers also have pure-emotion commercials, including ones which proudly list standard features that have been required by the US for the past ten years.

 

The "we're so American" stuff can only go so far.
I fly a US flag at my house. I despise the flag emblems on my Gladiator. The Ram commercials are really starting to annoy me. I know I'm jus tone data point.
Right now, I see this an attempt at distraction from their serious issues.

 

Show your customers that you stand behind your products. Make your warranty the industry leader. That's action, not press releases.

Also, comeback? With what vehicles? Your brand with only a minivan? Or the other brand with only a large sedan, a 13 year old SUV, and a CUV that you can't sell in NA because the tariffs are too high to continue importing it?

 

In the 1990s, Chrysler didn't hide its turnaround. All these stories are from Chrysler PR. They WANTED people to know what they were doing so they would trust their cars.

USA vs Japan: plant changes for a new Chrysler (1989-94)

SCORE: Saving billions with supplier ideas

Extended enterprise: Bringing in the suppliers

Empowerment Makes The Team - Quality Digest (if not available try Empowered work teams at Chrysler - Allpar Forums)

Dealer quality at Chrysler (didn't entirely work, but it was great for some dealers)

• Cultural change at Chrysler. (2005). In N. Taher (Ed.), Dynamics of Change Management, ICFAI University Press (ISBN 8178815842)

 

Offering a 10-Year warranty only works in support of other, more pressing, initiatives: a focus on quality, safety, value for money, and a product strategy that meets the needs of the bulk of customers in that market.

In N.A., such product strategy means a strong presence in Compact Car, Subcompact SUV, Compact SUV and Midsize SUV (2 and 3-row).

Hyundai-Kia tick all of these boxes; STLA doesn't.

BTW, Mitsubishi is a good example of what happens when you offer a 10-Year warranty by itself without all the other initiatives.

 

Offering a 10-Year warranty only works in support of other, more pressing, initiatives: a focus on quality, safety, value for money, and a product strategy that meets the needs of the bulk of customers in that market.

In N.A., such product strategy means a strong presence in Compact Car, Subcompact SUV, Compact SUV and Midsize SUV (2 and 3-row).

Hyundai-Kia tick all of these boxes; STLA doesn't.

BTW, Mitsubishi, is a good example of what happens when you offer a 10-Year warranty without all the other, more pressing, initiatives.

It only keeps you alive in the market in Mitsu's case...the new Outlander (as good of a vehicle as it is) alone cannot sustain Mitsubishi in the US.
At least Mitsubishi has a plan unlike Stella...who seemingly doesn't have one for Chrysler...
Mitsubishi is launching one new or refreshed vehicle each year in the U.S. from fiscal year 2026 through 2030, as part of its "Momentum 2030" plan. This strategy aims to expand the current lineup by nearly double by 2030, introducing vehicles in segments where Mitsubishi does not currently compete. These new models will include a mix of powertrain technologies, such as internal combustion engines, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles.
Mitsu 2030

 

Some of us have been saying for years that STLA is ONLY concerned with investors; customers, dealers, suppliers, employees can all be damned.

This thread only makes this same exact point one more time.

 

Some of us have been saying for years that STLA is ONLY concerned with investors; customers, dealers, suppliers, employees can all be damned.

This thread only makes this same exact point one more time.

They aren't any different then a lot of fortune 500 companies. Shareholders are front and center. And really that's all that matters. My store I work at had a big round table meeting yesterday. Many middle corporate types were there. I told one of my coworkers, here they are making decisions that will never affect them, but it will certainly affect us.

 

why did they drop the Cherokee, Compass and Renegade?

trying to get out of the small/mid-size market?

Most companies seem to have a new make over/refresh of the same model name with no down time in-between.

 

Compass is still available

 

Renegade was discontinued because of slow sales. If the tariffs ever get settled, I think a proper one new one would sell. Many women bought them. However with the push for them to return to the kitchen, it might not be worth the investment at this time.

 

all they had to do was a refresh on it, but they should have done that after the first year when they found out nobody liked it.

I remember when the SanteFe came out, magazines called it under powered and the front end was ugly, used the word bulborus on the front fenders, 6 months later it had a more powerful motor and a new front end and sales took off...

 

At that time they had their minds, wrongly, set on another course, greed. Now, it's more of a survival course.

 

Ford Toyota Hyundai. Kia and VW are below Jeep which is above the average line.

We have had very little issues with our Grand Cherokee, from 1993 on, we did skip the cervelus years. we had a GC but did not buy a new one during that time

 

Car companies with poor quality can get a better rep by pretending they have good quality and advertising it nonstop - some of Ford's worst cars were made during the "Job One" campaign.

 

You mean kinda like now apparently?

 

Okay, to be proper here, the "former" Chrysler Corp brands here don't help themselves much. Instead of preaching the American flag, which is a bit of a stretch, they should be talking about their warranty and the Hemi's return. But they aren't much.

 

FWIW, the up went back down, as they so often do. Maybe one company decided to buy a ****load of STLA shares and drove the price up slightly. Maybe the fools who speculate based on graphics bought in until the pattern changed to a classic stop buying pattern. Maybe it was briefly attempting to be a meme stock. Who knows why the market does what it does, day to day? Nobody really knows, people on finance news just assert their guesses as though they're real, just as political journalists assert their guesses as to politicians' motivations as though they know what's in someone else's head and/or the stated explanation is always the real one.

You can see that the bounces like yesterday's are not unusual. The overall trendline is bad. The 52 week high was $16.29 and now they're at $9.32. The five year high was around $29.51.

GM, by comparison, is way up, but you'll notice there, too, they have sudden gains and losses that quickly disappear.

Here's GM five years. Not sure when Barra said they were making operational profits on EVs. An actual profit including engineering costs would be incredibly hard this early in the Ultium lifecycle. As a reminder, Chrysler nearly went bankrupt on what they had to spend just for a four-cylinder FWD gasoline car, and it took them a few years to pay that off though it was in the heart of the market and a runaway success.

 

GM, ex of pandemic year had its share price just about where it began ...in 2009. See chart from 2015 onwards.

Spiked, then, after years of proving Marchionne's case (made to it in his merger proposal in 2015/16) that GM is structurally incapable of earning its cost of capital) early last year ONLY after:

a share buyback of as much as 25%(!) of its free float stock and then large slowdowns and cut backs etc in the ev and battery etc doomed investments.

Of course: a very oligopolistic and long protected by 25% chicken tax plus footprint rule, hold on the usa big suv and big ICE pickup truck market helps, as ever....and gm financial profits.

Plus all those 100% gm china and gm korea new affordable Buicks.

Interesting, too: how gm stock price is proving indifferent to its self confessed 5billion usd hit due to tariffs proving that wall street values GM exclusively for its financial arm plus of course: its predominant sales of big usa ICE pickups and huge ICE suv s. GM is either absent by now or ( deeply )in the red everywhere else in the world: including China, Latam.

GM share prices have stayed buoyant, steadily higher since its huge early2024 share buyback: unlike stla (for its idiosyncratic Tavares related reasons, mainly) or of course ford, vw porsche, bmw, mercedes...etc.

Auto industry is at deep er discount in the financial markets as a whole: seen as a sort of 'rust belt' in perpetuity. ExBYd, exTesla and maybe Toyota.


PS:

Gratuitous Advisory: very 'long' STLA, and Archer evtol Aviation and also esp Leapmotor, and .....somewhat 'short' GM. Ford is irrelevant. As ever. ;-)

 

Toyota's also down. Are you suggesting Toyota's also "dead"?
GM's doing quite well in quality and they're quietly building back their lost market share.

 

I could care less about GM, Ford, Toyota etc. Stellantis needs sharpen their focus on their own business.

 

Interesting data in those bar charts comparing '24 and '25.
Some of that data makes sense.
The reputation really has been Stellantis' to lose, because just a few years before the founding of Stellantis, Mopar quality was "holding it's own."
Not stellar, but their customer care was decent enough to quickly recover from issues.
That's what I experienced, and why I've stuck with them so long. Yeah I like them, and "Mopar or No Car" and such.
But knowing their quality was not up with Honda and Toyota never bothered me much, because I always had good luck with service. They would fix things quickly, have parts right away, and they were relatively affordable.

I've notice that all come undone in and around 2022.
There are a lot of factors at play. Yeah, Stellantis was formed.
COVID really messed a lot of stuff up in manufacturing, supply chain, et. I witnessed a lot of it first hand.
The dealership service has really suffered since then too.
Hourly rates have skyrocketed, but actual salaries have not gone up much, leading to mechanic shortages at basically every CDJR around me.
The dealer nearest me that I used all through COVID, went under new management, and they got terrible, right-quick.
They even hassled me for wanting service with them without buying my vehicle there!
That was a FIRST for me! Never EVER did I hear that was a thing, and that never happened to any family either, who've taken multiple vehicle brands to multiple dealers.

Finally, the dealer I'm settling on now, that's the next closest, has so far been very very good in servicing my temperamental 4xe.
Their sales ratings and reviews are in the toilet, and are borderline illegal, but service so far has been top notch. I even got to talk to one of the mechanics, and we literally did a "differential diagnosis" together in the waiting room, this past Friday.

Seeing Toyota down on that list doesn't surprise me either.
Their vehicles are, of course, highly coveted. But when we looked at some Toyotas at two dealers around me, the experience was awful!
It left me puzzled why anyone puts up with their nonsense to buy those cars, and especially when deals are non-existent.

Subaru makes sense. Their product seems top notch, their sales and service sound easy-going and straightforward. They're priced well, leading to more frictionless buying experiences.
Two of my friends have his/hers Outbacks now, and love them.

 

Another person besides myself that is a realist and an actual recent and long time customer. Thank you for your observations. Mine are very similar except I've had a steady dealer.