Fiat Chrysler showcases huge engines
DETROIT - In an era where the biggest buzz in the automotive industry is about self-driving cars, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has been doubling down on jawdropping horsepower.
At the New York Auto Show last month, the automaker revealed the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon — an 840-horsepower car better suited for the drag strip than the streets. And the next day? Fiat Chrysler unveiled the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk — an SUV with a 707-horsepower Hellcat engine.
Just two months earlier, at the Chicago Auto Show, Dodge revealed the 2018 Durango SRT. Touted as the “most powerful and capable” three-row SUV, it has a Hemi V-8 that generates 475 horsepower.
Tim Kuniskis, head of Dodge, SRT, Chrysler and Fiat, frequently pokes fun at the industry’s current obsession with self-driving cars when he boasts about Dodge’s stable of high-powered, modern muscle cars.
“They are not autonomous, they are not hybrids, they do not get 50 miles per gallon, and you cannot summon them with your smartphone,” Kuniskis quipped last year when the company introduced special editions of the Challenger and Charger. “They are domestic, not domesticated.”
The gratuitous display of horsepower at the unveiling of the Dodge Demon in New York spawned screaming headline after headline. But it also caused some to question the automaker’s commitment to keeping up with competitors who are plowing money into electric and autonomous vehicles.
Kuniskis, who has emerged as an automotive marketing wizard, said he knows he needs to be careful when he jokes about driverless and electric cars.
“I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t think that the technology is great. We do,” Kuniskis said. “But we (Dodge) also have the luxury of being one brand in a five-brand showroom. And the luxury of saying this is what the Dodge DNA is all about.”
Mike Manley, head of the company’s Jeep and Ram brands, said those who think the automaker is failing to adequately prepare for a future with tougher fuel economy regulations are “completely wrong.”
“I am serious when I say if you look at our group portfolio, we’ve demonstrated that we have the technology,” Manley said last month. “We have very detailed plans in terms of when we are rolling out. You will progressively see, as we get to the 2020s, more and more electrification really across a very broad part of the vehicle portfolio.”
Manley and other Fiat Chrysler executives point out that the Auburn Hills, Michigan, automaker just began shipping its Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan — a plug-in hybrid that goes 84 miles on a full charge. Indeed, analysts have praised the company for developing a vehicle that truly benefits from an alternative powertrain.
Fiat Chrysler just announced an expanded relationship with Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to supply the tech giant with 500 more Pacifica Hybrid minivans that will be converted into self-driving vehicles.
Also, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told Wall Street analysts last month that the automaker has the capability to produce the Chrysler Portal — a semiautonomous electric minivan it revealed in January — within the next two years.
Still, Fiat Chrysler’s future plans for hybrid and electric cars and autonomous vehicles are far less specific than those of its crosstown rivals.