FIAT CHRYSLER UNVEILS WINDSOR-MADE PACIFICA MINIVAN TO CANADIAN AUDIENCES,
Fiat Chrysler Canada’s $ 3.7- billion overhaul of its Windsor, Ont., minivan plant has created 1,200 new jobs, an indication that Canada will play an important role in Fiat Chrysler NV’s future as it restructures its operations.
The company revealed its new Pacifica minivan, built in Windsor, to a Canadian audience for the first time Thursday at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto.
The Pacifica fits well into the parent company’s new strategy of building more pickup trucks, SUVs and crossovers at the expense of passenger cars, said Reid Bigland, chief executive of FCA Canada.
The corporate overhaul includes a plan to kill the smaller Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 in response to what CEO Sergio Marchionne believes is a “permanent shift” away from passenger cars.
This may have been troubling news to Fiat Chrysler’s workers in Brampton, Ont., who build the Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger and Chrysler 300 sedans.
But Bigland pledged Thursday that “Brampton is steady as she goes.”
“With respect to the fullsized vehicles and especially the more muscle- car- oriented (vehicles), certainly the benefit of low fuel prices plays right into those vehicles’ wheelhouses,” Bigland said, adding that demand for them is stronger than it has ever been.
When asked if the bigcar-and-truck strategy could backfire if gasoline prices rise again, Bigland said he’s not worried.
“I think the fallacy out there is when fuel prices are up, people want small cars, and that’s not the case,” said Bigland, who is also Fiat Chrysler’s head of U. S. sales and head of the Alfa Romeo brand in North America.
“What people want is fuel- efficient vehicles … so the real key is to make large vehicles more relevant for a $ 4- a- gallon gasoline environment.”
Bigland pointed to the Pacifica, which gets 2.9 litres per 100 kilometres, saying “it doesn’t get any more fuelefficient than that.”
Chrysler, before it was bought by Fiat during the financial crisis, struggled to adapt to changing consumer tastes when big SUVs and pickup trucks fell out of favour in the mid-2000s as oil prices rose.
It appears the company could be making the same mistake again, said Micheline Maynard, a long- time transportation reporter and author of The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market.
“They don’t really have a car gene, that’s the problem,” Maynard said in a recent interview.
“The more you focus on SUVs and pickup trucks, and the more the brand Chrysler is identified with big vehicles, the harder it will be, if the market turns, for Fiat Chrysler to convince people that they care about fuel efficiency.”