‘Jeep is securing Fiat’ s presence, investment in India’

Four years after he got here, KEVIN FLYNN, managing director of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) India, says Jeep is the brand that establishes the firm’s operations in India. In an interview with Pavan Lall, he shares the company’s strategy, launch plans, and challenges. Edited excerpts:

Howwould you describe the India strategy you’ve been implementing over the past fewyears?

We started by bringing in the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Wrangler, followed by establishing India as a righthand export drive hub for SUVs such as our Jeep Compass launched last year. We also wanted to make sure people understand the depth of our engineering because a lot of cars look like SUVs but don’t drive like SUVs. For Jeep, we are all about SUV capability.

The Compass, which started off strong, has seen slow sales of late. Your followup plans, and what’ s in the pipeline?

Despite a drop in volumes, which we expect to bounce back, we are pleased with the first year of sales. We sold around 27,000 Compass vehicles at a price of ~1.8 million. Up next, we will launch during pre-holiday season the ‘Black Pack’ Compass with black roof, black mirrors, black wheels, and all-black leather interiors, as well as a ‘Limited Plus’ Compass the customers have been asking for. Early next year, we will bring in the Trailhawk, which will be BS-VI compliant and the first diesel automatic version of Compass. That will be followed by the sub-4 metre SUV, which will be around the size of the Ford Ecosport and Maruti Brezza, in 2020.

What about other brands in the firm... the Dodge, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo?

The Dodge and Chrysler are all left-hand drive engineering as well as North American brands. The Alfa Romeo is very niche and entirely CBU. But, I would never say never for Alfa Romeo. Right now, the Jeep is the most relevant to underpinning and is securing FCA’s presence and investment in the country.

Fiat has a long history in this country, with car clubs and older models. But, where does it go from here?

We aren’t over with Fiat. But when brought in Jeep, we did what we call “migrate” from a Fiat operation into a Jeep brand. We know where we are going. Fiat is harder to chart because while people have fond memories of it, you have a market that is dominated by one player which impacts pricing, dynamics. So to bring in cars in that arena is hard to make a business case for.

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