How Stellantis Became Global Auto’s Cautionary Tale

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Bloomberg Audio Studios. I'm Hannah Elliott. And I'm Matt Miller, and this is Hot Pursuit. Coming up on today's podcast, we hear about the demise and hopefully the rebirth of Stellantis as a car maker. We talk about some car shows that we've gone to are going to, and...

We have had a couple of trips, one long, and one I think fairly important. Tell me about your drive to Denver.

So Magnus and I drove to Denver from LA in a day. We made it in about 14 and a half hours, it's like 1100 miles, and yeah, I have to say it felt pretty good, and we also drove back two days later, which was actually a more difficult feat.

Well, most importantly, you went there in a 991 in your 991 turbo, right? Yes, 91.1. Did you have Willow in the back?

Oh, that is the most important thing. We brought Willow now. We were going to Denver because it was my mom's 70th birthday, and we had a little family reunion.

Happy birthday, mom.

Happy birthday, mom. Of course, we have to bring Willow with us. She's our little fur baby, and so we thought driving would be a great idea.

And also, we are rather... We don't have a lot of patience sometimes, so we kind of just were like, let's just do it in a day. I don't want to stay somewhere in Grand Junction overnight in some, you know, $30 hotel.

So it kind of became, let's just drive it in a day. You can do it. It's basically the 15 to the 70, 15 sort of changes into the 70 after Las Vegas.

But I have to say, it's such a cool drive, especially when you're heading east, the clock's change at one point. We went through five different states, went through a time, time zone change, which bought us an hour, basically, at night, driving over the mountains.

It was great. On the way back, we actually hit snow in the Rockies, sort of near Vale. So we had all weather, saw rain, saw rainbows, hit snow in the Rockies on the way back, and it was great.

I imagine it's a, I mean, I think it's a perfect trip car. I have done a lot of very long trips in my 991 Carrera S, but I didn't have a German shepherd in the back.

Like that's important to mention that Willow is a German shepherd. She's not small. She talks herself, right? And it's kind of like her little cubby and like a lot of dogs. She actually likes feeling like she's in a little cave. She's crate train.

She feels safe and comfortable. So she just talks herself in. We actually put a little lamb skin rug over the back seat. So she would have, you know, a smell of home. And we stopped four times. Now on the way out there, we actually stopped at one point to add coolant because we got a

coolant warning engine, an engine warning about overheating. And that is a little lesson where we had taken the car to get prepped before this trip to have an oil change and just assumed that the folks who changed the oil would have also topped off the other

fluids in the car. Well, they didn't. So we actually made an unexpected stop to add some coolant to the car. But that was fine. And yeah, Willow is so calm. She's the best road dog. She loves it. Thank goodness. She likes riding in cars. Matt, you went to the turtle invitational last week, right?

I did. I did. So the turtle invitational is a car show that my buddy Philip Richter puts on in Bedford. And it's become bigger and bigger every year. This year he teamed up with 1600 Veloce, which is the huge. I think the biggest bring a trailer seller. And it happens to also be up there in New York City, or sorry, in New York state.

And he had some really not only some amazing cars and there were a ton of them, but some really cool people. Wayne Karini was there who does the barn find show he had Jonathan Whitmer there, his CEO of the Revise Institute, Ken Gross was there. He's not a motive historian. Alex Fawn Moser was there. He manages VC VSOC, which is a very special old cars, which is a year.

I like that. That's cool car dealer. And so a lot of like industry grates, especially in terms of collecting, right? Because these guys are all big collectors.

What was the theme of the show? Was there a certain bent to it?

In terms of like judging, there were a bunch of different categories because Phil loves Bruno Sacco and these that era of Mercedes Benzes. There were a ton of those.

There were a bunch of Ferrari Dinos, more than I've ever seen gathered in one place. There were a bunch of Shelby cars. There was a big collection of V12 motor cars.

But it wasn't like, oh, and there were a bunch of fire trucks if you're into that.

Like old ones, vintage fire trucks. But it wasn't like everything had to be perfect.

You know, you didn't need like the exact right end cap on your steering stabilizer. Like you might at Pebble Beach.

So it was cars, I think that have been driven and cars that people are still driving and cars that have a story more than have been perfectly restored.

And was this free to anyone who wanted to come? No, you had to buy tickets and there was it held.

There were a ton of people. It's on Philip's horse farm. So Philip is also like an Olympic level show jumper. And he has a big horse farm in Bedford. His family's been in the business for a while.

I should say he's a wealth manager as well at Hollow Brook. We've had Philip Richter on the show before.

But it was just one of those Friday night, there was a panel discussion about collecting cars.

And I just am so happy. And I feel like I'm in my element when I'm surrounded by a bunch of people that just want to talk about cars.

And I get that feeling sometimes in Detroit. And it was like that. I didn't want to leave on Friday night after this dinner, delicious dinner and panel discussion.

He also collects and restores old BMW motorcycles. So there were a bunch of guys with like cool old beamers there. Old air.

Oh, that's so great. And it was it was a great time. I really they only happen every other year. So now I'm looking forward to two years from now.

But I can't wait to go back to this to this car show again. That's great. Did you bring the family? Is this a family thing?

I brought my daughters and my neighbor Eric brought his kids as well. And we drove up there and brand new Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Which was pretty amazing.

You are moving up in the world, my friends.

Yeah, Jerry Spawn was in here last week. The head of comms for Rolls-Royce motor cars North America.

And he was kind enough to let me this car for the car show everybody there of course wanted to see it.

It's you know, it's not a vintage car obviously it's brand new, but it still has the big V12 and it was mustique blues.

This gorgeous shade of blue that almost looks green in some sunlight and it had a fabric interior, not leather interior with kind of like a chain link pattern and some s's on it.

I don't know why. How was the fabric with kids?

I thought it was fantastic. I didn't let them spill anything on it, but I did put car seats in the back and I felt much less guilty about how I would have felt where it leather.

Oh, you're saying the fabric was actually more resistant to dirt.

I think I mean, it was like a bamboo based fabric. It was like a $10,000 option. The whole thing was a $495,000 ghost.

So I've got to be one of the most expensive cars I've ever driven, you know, other than a Bugatti.

And it was pretty great. I will say the new Rolls-Royce Ghost is tuned to be even waftier than the ones I remember from, you know, 2011, 2012.

Those were like sportier and more, I mean not sporty, but more of a driver's car and this is more of a floater.

And also it has like giant, I don't know what the diameter was, but like 24's, you know, in terms of the wheels, so a tiny sidewall, which then counteracts.

Like if I have a super wafty floaty car, I don't want to feel it when I hit a pothole, right?

And if you have no sidewall on giant rims, every time you hit a pothole, it's terrifying.

So I was thinking like if I got this car, I would put like 20 inches, 20 inch wheels on it and big sidewall because you want to soak up the horrible roads of America.

Or just something in the middle, like 21 or 22. I mean, 24 seems insane.

Well, I don't know what they were, but they might have been 22 or 23.

You, you picked up your Rolls Royce is a little bit older and you've had some issues.

I do, I have had some issues, but I've got one running. I've got the Silver Spur running, which is I'm happy to report.

It was a simple radiate or thing. This is not the car that cropped out on me last week. This is a different car.

Oh, I see. That had various cars in and out of Charlie's shop.

Yes, it was leaking a mysterious fluid.

So that has been actually replaced and repaired and I will admit, in the interest of time, we took it to some rando guy in downtown.

And Indy, an Indy mechanic.

Yes, so we'll call him an Indy. This is literally next to the tow yard where a long time ago I had a fiat toad and was shaken down for about 500 bucks in cash.

This is a place I would not feel comfortable being alone.

Anyway, we took the rolls there and $350 later. It's fine. So I drove it today to work.

That's fantastic. That's a happy ending to that story.

What car show do you have coming up and what will you take?

So on Saturday, there's this very cool Italian car show called Machini Shima.

And this is the third year that it has happened.

It is put on by my good friend Dorian, who is the owner of DV Mechanics.

He is a very famous and accomplished Alpha Romeo mechanic, who manages basically all of Southern California's and some of Northern California's Alpha Romeo vintage Alpha Romeo.

He preps cars for racing. I saw him in Monterey prepping cars for some great races up there at Laguna.

But anyway, Dorian and some of his friends are putting on this Machini Shima car show, which is all about Italian cars.

They're also Italian motorcycles.

The best kind.

The best kind. They will be serving Italian espressos and spritzes.

And there will be cocktails by one of my favorite bars, bar Henry, which is in Silver Lake.

So or kind of Echo Park, I guess.

But it'll be fun. It's on Saturday. It's downtown at the rolling greens.

Tickets are a little bit expensive. They're $53, which is rather expensive for a local car show.

But I have been before and it is a really fun day.

And I'm also happy to say dogs are allowed, which is a very big thing for me too.

Children not allowed.

What car?

No, just kidding.

What car were you to? Are you going to show any cars?

No, no, no. You know, this show is actually about 800 meters from the garage where we keep our cars.

So we will be walking.

Although I do admit it was a matter of some discussion last night where I was saying we should drive something fun

just so we can show it and other people can see it.

And my significant other thought, why would we drive and fight for parking when we can literally walk there?

Fair, fair point, fair point.

So I might have won. I might have lost out on that actually.

So this is a great segue to our interview today because Alfa Romeo is such an important brand to car lovers.

And to be honest, a lot of the guys that I was talking to at the turtle were Maserati lovers as well.

Yes.

And car collectors, you know, I think Maserati has won the Pebble Beach Concord Elegance more often than Ferrari.

In fact, I know that because I think Ferrari is only won the Concord Elegance one time.

But Mercedes has the most wins.

I do know that.

Mercedes, right, is up there.

I feel like there's another brand that is tied with Mercedes.

In any case, Maserati and Alfa Romeo are not the biggest problems for Stellantis.

And we're going to get to the disaster that happened there and our hopes for the future next.

This is...

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We are very honored to have one of our best reporters, Gabriella Coppola, with us out of Detroit.

She covers obviously the automotive industry for Bloomberg News.

And she's writing about one of my favorite subjects today.

And that is Mopar or No Car.

Meaning you have to either have Mopar or you don't want it at all, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, that's a saying that I actually picked up from Magnus. I don't know.

It's an old famous thing.

Oh, I like that. That's what they say.

But I find myself tending to love of the Big Three.

Like I tend towards Dodge. I guess it's because of their sort of brute strength.

You know, the big naturally aspirated motors and the kind of out there muscle car design.

I'm into everything that got killed. Yeah.

Yeah, let's start coming back.

Yeah, I might also be coming back. I mean, Gabby, your story is called House DeLantis

became global auto cautionary tale.

And it starts with this vignette of a commercial, you know, with a voice over by Harrison Ford,

talking about the freedom of choosing a gas guzzler versus an EV kind of what that is alluding to.

Can you just talk us through how this, how you started formulating this story idea,

what you were seeing and take us to your entry point, that commercial, how you got data

and where you went from there?

Well, you know, this story as many business week stories are had a long gestation period.

So I would say at the seat of it started last fall, like the fall of 2024,

when it just became really apparent how much trouble Stellantis was in, they had,

you know, had this shocking profit shortfall and Jeep, which was always the golden goose.

You know, the thing that every CEO would always kind of tend and care for and wanted to,

you know, increase its riches was just had lost a ton of market share.

And things were looking so bad that I said to my editors, like we should do a story on how

this guy Carlos Tavares destroyed the Jeep brand, like literally one of the most valuable car brands in the world.

Sure.

Yes, an icon.

And then before I could even write like a page, they fired the CEO.

So that was like great, you know, really December.

Yes, so then we're like, okay, cool, cool.

Well, we'll just keep writing this story and then we'll, you know, we'll peg it to whoever the new CEO is.

And really not firing validated your idea.

It's almost like you saw it coming.

Yeah, although I feel like I don't feel like I was only, I feel like any good auto reporter who's paying attention

to their beat could see that was it.

You know, but actually, no, I think there was still a surprise because the belief was that Tavares would

serve out the end of his term, which would be, it would have been the end of next year.

So it was kind of like, let's just get him to kind of change course or like kind of course correct

or modify things that Ben, then he can stay.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

So anyway, we were waiting for the successor to Carlos Tavares who just for the audience who doesn't know Carlos Tavares is from Portugal,

but he was kind of educated in built his career in France working for Nissan.

He was a protégé of Carlos Gone.

And up until he became the CEO of Stellantis, he was seen as kind of a turnaround ways.

And Pujo around the Opel brand in Europe.

So he had a lot of credibility coming into this job.

So once he left, we were like, okay, we'll peg it to the new CEO.

And surely that'll happen in January or February.

And then it was March and then it was April.

And there was still no successor.

And John Elcane, who is the sign of the Niele family, which was the kind of billionaire dynasty,

they're like the Kennenys of Italy, his great, great grandfather founded Fiat in 1899 in turn.

He was a contemporary of Henry Ford with the visit Henry Ford, you know, took inspiration from Henry Ford.

So Elcane was kind of left holding the bag.

And just as the time wore on it just seemed like, gosh, just nobody want this job.

And so that kind of became the story in addition to the Jeep story.

It was like, the way I think about it is if you look at the global auto industry right now, it's kind of like Hunger Games.

You know, we're going through already electrification was kind of challenging the business model.

You know, having to totally switch technologies.

Nobody can quite predict the pace of adoption and varies by region.

That's a really tough problem.

You know, automated driving, self driving, the investment that that requires.

Then you take all this sort of new geopolitical tension, tariffs going up.

And then you look at the rise of the Chinese auto industry.

And now they've become a fully formed, you know, competitive juggernaut in the world that's trying to, you know, export cars around the world.

Those are a lot of pressures for any automaker.

The leading, the competing national interest, right?

Because Alcon when he was, I guess interim CEO had to do this tour where he like promised the French he wasn't in a cut production there.

And obviously he's not allowed to cut production in Italy.

And then he has to kiss up to Trump and say he's not going to cut here.

So they're left with a ton of overcapacity.

Exactly. That's exactly right, Matt.

And like, I feel like I was just, that's what really got me was like what I became so intrigued with is like, oh my gosh, running this company is not just running a car company.

It's like, like we say in the story, it's like the United Nations and Tavares had like burned so many bridges around the world that Alcon just had to do this massive diplomatic push cleanup effort.

And try to run the company when it was in a really rough spot and try to find someone to take this thankful job that nobody seemed to want.

The company will say they have a number of good candidates. And so that's what they say about it.

I'm sure at the right price you could have a lot of candidates, but the question is like, do you want to pay? Have a shift to pay to get someone to do this job.

So that was kind of how it evolved into what it became, which was partially a story about the, you know, the fall of the Jeep brand.

And then also about this company with all these self inflicted wounds, trying to heal itself. And then while it's trying to get its house in order, then Trump comes in and starts shaking up the economy with tariffs and all those kind of things.

By the way, it wasn't just, I wanted to point out, it wasn't just the Jeep brand that was ruined.

For example, Chrysler at one point, and maybe still only has one product, right?

Just the minivan. And that's all they have.

They have the minivan now.

And also Dodge, which had made such incredible headway with the challenger and the charger.

Like, there's such popular vehicles, outselling Mustang and Camaro.

For some reason, unbeknownst to anyone, Tim Caniscus was like, this is the end.

We're not going to make the 6.4 liter heavy anymore in 2023.

Like, why would you act that motor?

It's like, if the Jeep is an iconic car brand, this is the most iconic motor in all of automotive.

What other motor does anybody know by name? Maybe the Coyote, right?

So the heavy was killed with no real explanation.

And then they wanted to replace that with an EV, which is the exact wrong audience.

So they killed Dodge. They killed Chrysler. They were suffocating Jeep.

And then Ram has a similar problem, right?

Well, and that's just the US brands.

And I just want to say on the, I mean, I don't think it's a total mystery.

I think that a lot of this was driven by regulation and needing to comply with tighter fuel economy rules.

And, you know, when car makers, when they roll out their models, they have to do this very complex calculation of, okay.

It's, you know, it's the whole fleet, the corporate average fuel economy for your entire fleet.

It's not just that one model. So if you want to sell hammies, you got to sell some EVs over here.

You know, that's how it was pre-Trump. But I think that was also a decision by Tavaris, you know, that he, you know, Chrysler, I'm going to call them Chrysler.

Yeah, Chrysler, Stellantis, you know, they have always been the laggard and Detroit in terms of fuel economy.

And they've paid billions of dollars and fines or bought credits from Tesla and, you know, maybe some of the Japanese other car companies that were in compliance.

So I think Tavaris, who was like very focused on cutting costs and like optimizing profit, was like, why are we paying our competitive?

Like, why are we just spending all this money subsidizing Tesla? Like, we're not doing that anymore. Let's make our own EVs.

Which on paper sounds like a very rational and, you know, decision. But what I don't think he appreciated was like, that's what consumers want in America.

Like that's the American market. And the thing that was so telling was that you didn't see GM and Ford killing their performance engines during the same period, even as they were investing in electric vehicles and, you know, going all in, perhaps too much.

So that just goes to show you that some of this was, yes, regulatory driven, but some of it was also, you know, just bad choices, bad decisions.

And it does seem like John Elkin personally believed that he wants to be, I think you use the phrase or an analyst use the phrase, pistons and pixels.

John Elkin does have this vision that he wants to like move everything very far into the future. And tell me if that's a wrong read of it, but it does seem like he to on a personal level wanted to just push everything really far forward technologically.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I've to be clear, I've never met John Elkin. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Really? Yes, shockingly, nobody wanted to talk to me, but it's a, they're an awkward, they're in a rough stage right now. You know, you want to talk when you have a good story to tell, and they're still trying to work through all these problems.

But I do think it's true. And this is based on reporting, you know, talking to people who know him well, who've worked with him.

I mean, people will tell you he's not a car guy. It's true. He's not somebody who loves car. I mean, but I mean, I think what really moves him and excites him is technology and innovation.

And if you look at Ferrari, you know, which was spun out, you know, that's also, you know, his exor has the kind of investment fund that controls all of the Niele family sort of, you know, investments.

You know, he's very passionate about that because when you look at Ferrari, that brand is strong. I mean, obviously it's very sexy, you know, super car luxury brand, but there's a lot of innovation happening there.

And I think that's what excites him whether it's in a car or, you know, a mobility or medical diagnostics or whatever.

I do think he is excited by that. So I think that, yes, any, but you can't argue with what he's doing with his money.

It's his job to be the steward of the family fortune, which I have to look at the story again from where how many billions they're worth.

But I mean, he's responsible for like 100 or so people like they, you know, live off of that. Yes, the Niele family stake in exor is worth about 10 billion euros.

So his job is to make sure that they live to fight another day, you know, to keep growing and making smart investments.

But I do think he has a vision of kind of being a patient investor who's not just looking for a quick, you know,

you know, quick ROI, like he does want to invest in like strategically important industries and things are going to benefit society.

I think that's all true. But he also has to look at the hard facts like the mass market auto industry is under a lot of pressure right now.

So if you look at what he's been doing with his money, yes, he has been, you know, he's the stake in Stellantis, you know, is getting smaller.

And he's investing more in other, you know, tech. He's on the board of meta now. So clearly, like he's very focused on tech.

But I think that, you know, they said this week I obviously it wasn't a lot of touch with his PR people during the reporting of all this.

And you know, they say, look, he's going to stand behind it. He's never not stood behind the company.

And they did, I don't want to speculate on what he's going to do, but they, you know, they got a lot of problems to solve.

And they did actually find a replacement for Tavares, someone internal, which is interesting.

They found their unicorn or they're hoping it's their unicorn.

Yeah, I don't think I know what Dixie's a unicorn, but I think he's a very smart, competent, very well-liked person.

And by all accounts, he's, you know, moving very quickly and decisively. I mean, it's just that there's so much.

Antonio Filosa.

I mean, the guy has been with the company for many years, like even a couple of decades, right?

And he learned at the hand of Sergio.

And I don't think we can leave out of the story how important Sergio was to El Con's initial success with Fiat Chrysler.

And how, I mean, we talk about superstar car CEOs, right?

There's Leia Cocoa, there's Alan Mulally, there's Carlos Gone, you know, obviously fallen star, but still he was like a rock star.

And Tavares also kind of a fallen star, but Sergio was up there in the pantheon of the grapes.

Absolutely.

I think he's such an amazing character, and he touched so many people that his connection to Filosa has to give you some confidence, right?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of what they're doing is kind of trying to, I mean, the world, it's amazing how much Sergio, and just for people who don't know, Sergio Marcione, he worked in some of the companies in the XOR portfolio, and El Con kind of plucked him out of obscurity and made him the CEO of Fiat.

He got in June 2004, he became CEO of Fiat, and he basically engineered this amazing deal where he kind of got when Chrysler went bankrupt in 2009.

Sergio got Obama to agree to a deal to let Fiat and Chrysler merge and he kind of got an amazing deal. He kind of got it for a song, because he knew that Fiat needed a foot print outside of Italy and outside of Europe.

And at the time, Chrysler was thinking, we really need small cars because gas prices were up, the industry was in shambles.

So he not only did he achieve that merger, but then he just revived the Jeep brand.

He kind of really instilled this kind of mentality of like understanding, valuing the brands that, sorry, Fiat Chrysler had, he spun out for Ari, which made a lot of money for El Con and for investors.

He kind of just did things through his brilliance and sheer force of will and charisma and savvy and deal making that, you know, the average human probably would not have been able to pull off.

It's six cell phones.

A chain smoking six cell phone guys.

He's got a ton of different languages.

He's a workaholic. Yeah, he spoke. Yeah, so yeah, so Filosa was a protégé of him. Filosa was one of his guys. Filosa is Italian, but he spent most of his career in South America and Argentina and Brazil.

He started out as a plant rat in Spain, I think, or somewhere in Europe. And then he got sent to South America and kind of rose up the chain, managing Argentina.

Brazil, he became head of South America. So yeah, and everything I've heard about him is that he's just, he really listens, which is, I think, really different from Tavares because kind of Tavares is a Achilles heel was that he had this great strategy.

But then when it didn't quite, it wasn't a one-size-fits-all strategy and it wasn't working in the US. He didn't want to hear that.

He was just anybody who wouldn't listen to him. He would just fire them or get rid of them.

So I think Filosa is very different. He's very much a listener and, you know, taking counsel and things like that. But I mean, I think they're working as quickly as they can to kind of write the ship.

It's just that the market has to cooperate with them. And it's hard. I mean, I just were heading into the clothes of the third quarter auto sales in the US.

And once again, I'm the data showing that Stellantis is one of the worst performers. So it just shows you this is not a quick fix.

I'm Matt Miller, along with Hannah Elliott. You're listening to Hot Pursuit. We have more coming up after this.

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Can I just say before I know that Hannah wants to get to some of the iconic brands that they own and beyond Ferrari, they really do.

Like if you're a lot of people think if you're if you haven't dealt with Alfa Romeo, then you're not a real car lover, right? And then Maserati, all the big collectors have a love for Maserati.

One of the things that they did wrong is they got too greedy. During the pandemic, they took so much price. They raised the prices so much and tried to turn Jeep into this $100,000 luxury car.

It's not very.

It's not. And so that was a big problem for them, right? They just had so much inventory because they were charging way too much for everything they were selling.

Yes, and I think, you know, they certainly weren't alone in raising prices during the pandemic because there were such a shortage of supply. I mean, the automakers, they were all loving it. They were all talking about this is great.

Like we're not going back to the way things were. This is wonderful. We're making so much money.

But eventually the market changes, you know, eventually the production gets back up again, plants open and things start to normalize and then you don't have that pricing power anymore.

And then the other part of it is that, you know, during the pandemic is when this kind of run of inflation got triggered and, you know, caused the federal reserve to raise interest rates for the highest, the highest level. And I don't know, you may be 15 year or you're well over a decade.

So, I mean, almost my entire adult life, not give away my age, but we've had like really low interest rates. And I think that has really served the auto industry, the American auto industry well ever since 2008, 2009.

And I also know that aging and aging lineup also works poorly with this scenario that you're describing.

For sure. Yes, yes. For sure. So that's an important point I should mention that too. But basically, yes, Jeep was made for the times of, you know, boom, boom times when Americans could splurge and splurge on credit and get cheap credit to buy the car that their heart desires.

And I just don't think that's the case anymore. There's a real affordability issue. And more people are leaving the new car market moving to the used car market, they're looking for value.

Every quarter this year, I look at what are the best selling cars. It's like the Chevy tracks.

Or like, they had never heard of it.

Yeah. The Jeep Compass. I mean, all, you know, more affordable is what people want right now. That's just not how still it says lineup was positioned.

At the same time, yes, another thing to virus did in his kind of drive to cut costs was you would say the example I talk about a lot in the story was the Jeep Cherokee.

You know, the big seller for Jeep, I've always been the Wrangler, you know, is their halo vehicle and the grand chair against their top seller.

But then you had the Cherokee, which was kind of middling. It was in the middle. People felt like the kind of was like a weird blank.

The wheelbase wasn't quite right. It was a roominess wasn't quite right. So they made it and built Belvedere Illinois.

It was old. It needed to be updated. So Tavares, you know, stop that and said, OK, we're going to move to Mexico.

Because again, he was all about lowering lower in cost. So that was a huge political, you know, kerfuffle the UAW was not happy about that.

But also instead of say, OK, well, we're going to continue to make this here until the Mexican plan is up and running. He just ended it.

So then and that's right when the market was shifting to people really want affordability. And then it was like, oh, Jeep just doesn't have a car there.

Like you don't have that either the compass, but then the Cherokee was the next size up and they didn't have anything for like over two years.

So that I mean what you're seeing that they've lost so much volume. I was talking to a dealer in California and he said,

you know, we're starting to fill it in our service and repair business because there's not as many cars coming back that need to be serviced because that we've just lost so much volume.

So it's like, yeah, what can you tell us about Maserati and Alpha Romeo? I mean, in terms of what is going on with those two brands? We've heard about Jeep, of course, in Chrysler and Dodge a bit, but Maserati and Alpha just seemed to have fallen off a cliff completely.

Yeah, I mean, I think they to Varis did bring in one of his executives who had worked with before a guy named Larry Dominique who tried to revive Alpha Romeo and he put a lot of effort into it.

I mean, I remember seeing all that, you know, the marketing stuff they were doing. They have the the tonale, the hybrid. I mean, they had some really good looking cars. I don't know. I thought the cars that they were trying to sell here were nice.

They're also beloved. I mean, even like the Julia is a great BMW 3 Series competitor and the Stelvio had critical success. I mean, people journalists really love to drive that vehicle, but I suspect that one of the problems was if you're putting them up against BMW's, they would be a concern among us buyers about the reliability of the Italian car.

Yeah, well, that's, you know, quality has been a they're not the only ones, but yes, quality has been a chronic concern for me.

If he out stands for fix it again, Tony, right?

Fix it again, Tony. They didn't get that nickname for nothing. Yeah, I know that's one of Phyllis's big parties now is trying to fix that, but that's quite a bear.

So yeah, I just say, and now of course you've got tariff. So you've got 15% tariffs on imported cars from Europe. So how do you talk about?

You're already struggling. And then now what do you do? And then Maserati? I mean, I feel like as long as I've been on this beat, which is like nine years, Maserati was always struggling.

They were trying to make it profitable, trying to make it lose money. I mean, make it make money.

I was just talking to someone yesterday and they said that they just feel like what Maserati really needs to succeed is kind of that same kind of innovation and spirit that Ferrari has.

But and also that there's it's a lot of there's a lot of pride around the Italian brands of people do things the Italian way. And this is, you know, it's sometimes you got to break some eggs, I think, to like shake things up. And I feel like it's hard to do that.

At least that was this person's perspective. Somebody who you know worked on these brands. So that's kind of like more of a

They need their own orders. They need more cylinders and they need to win races, I think.

Yeah, racing again, get back to their roots. They're getting help.

They're getting back into it. And they're doing their best, at least from the from what I'm watching in sports. But it's not going to cut it with a V6, you know.

They they have to have an 8 to survive in a 10 or a 12 to distinguish themselves.

Gabby. Yes.

Is Lapo at all involved on a daily basis. This is the Rass Irassable brother of jaw who's really famous for making headlines in tabloids.

Yeah, but also a military paratrooper. Very nice and charming. I've spoke with him multiple times. Super fashionable.

Oh, really? Yes. I think you know much more about him than I do. I'm just curious if he's in, you know, active at all.

I did not hear that at all. I mean, I heard he's kind of living a quiet life with his family in Europe. He's kind of settled down from a lot of his

escapades. He's certainly inherited the charisma. Absolutely from the family. John, you know, like you say, is not charismatic, very reserved. I mean, he's been to your point about him really caring about Ferrari.

He's been at Ferrari events and that sort of thing. And he's tough to pick out of a crowd. I mean, he's so conservative, just the blue suit.

You're not my John Alcon right now. Yes. Yeah. Lapo is the opposite. Because Lapo is incredibly colorful and he's got all his grandfather suits.

And he didn't need to do it for a while. He was doing like custom interiors for Ferrari's maybe in paint jobs.

Watches. Wow. He does have a design design. I think the design and marketing flare. He has a real talent for that. That certainly. Yeah. He's a great personality, but you know, not involved.

I think he's laying low. Yeah, but I think we I had him in the story and we took it out, but I think he's a major player.

Tell us about Tim Caniscus, because I think it's unfair for me to lay the blame of the death of the heavy on his doorstep, right? He probably got orders from high up. And by all accounts, he is a muscle car guy. And now they've brought him back, right?

Oh, yeah. Well, he I think he came back like a couple of weeks after Tavares got pushed out. So it didn't take I don't think it was a tough sell to get him to come back. And I think, you know, Tim Caniscus.

I think he's from upstate New York. He grew up kind of tinkering with cars and his garage and then got to start and like working in dealerships and worked his way up. And he's probably one of the last like Sergio era kind of.

Just people who've been there, he spent most of his career at Fiat Chrysler. And he is, I mean, he's most famous feat is he kind of revived the Dodge brand, you know, during that Sergio era by creating the Brotherhood of muscle by, you know, taking these platforms, these vehicles that were old as Methuselah, but he would put these like big souped up engines in them.

And like the hellcat or the red eye or the demon, like people just love it. And they could charge a lot of money for him. He's grinning ear to ear right now.

He loves that. That's made for you. So he, yes, he is. I think, you know, and you say, oh, this happened under his watch. But I mean, he left the company in 2024 kind of, you know, I think silent protests, maybe, but he's back and he's been given.

He came back to run the Ram truck brand. And he's been, you know, shaking up the line up there. They just recently said they're not even going to make a fully electric pickup truck anymore.

They're going to focus on this e-rev called the Ram Charger, which is, I think, throughout the end of this year. So it's funny. Sometimes they kind of relate to the EV wave, which in some ways, I guess was kind of a blessing because, you know, well, they still have had to invest a lot of money on EVs that are not selling. And that's very painful.

But they're just canceling stuff. I mean, you know, they recently said they're not going to do the plug in hybrid a Wrangler, the four by you Wrangler anymore.

Wow, that seems so popular. It said those four by. They are. They're, they're like the number one P have seller. But I guess, you know, it's expensive. And they're starting to put these like hybrid engines like the new Jeep Cherokee starting with a hybrid.

It's like an engine out of Europe that's been adapted for the US. They say, but it's just like a plain vanilla hybrid. There's no plug, but, you know, better fuel economy. So they did that in the Cherokee. I think they're totally like, you know, rethinking their powertrain choices. They're, you know, model line up.

We're going to really hear a lot more in the first quarter of next year. That's when the fallows is supposed to come out with his strategy for the company.

But you know, it's just hard because there's not a lot of clarity. I mean, tariffs negotiations are still going on. But I think big picture of the whole auto industry realize is like, man, we got to make more stuff in the United States.

And they've gotten that is. And they've done away with cafe standards, or at least the fines, right? The regulation around that is gone. So they can bring back the hemi. They have a great inline six motor, the hurricane.

Yeah. 10 is one of the variants. They changed the name of the ram charger to the ram rev. So that's the e revs.

Oh, but I think the ram, I think the ram rev was, see, this was confused. I think it's some of the confusion they were trying to eliminate. So the ram rev was the Bev truck. Right. And now they're saying just e rev, but that one's called ram charger.

No, I have to remonstrate. So it's just, let me see the read my story. So the, so the be the truck you're right has been canceled. And I believe now, I honestly only know this from being in like forums because I'm on all the dodge and ram forums that they've changed the end of the ram charger. Now it'll be called the ram 1500 rev for the ram.

Oh, you are right. Oh my gosh. Look at you. Revolution electric.

Whatever I really do know what's going with cars. I just talked to you guys. You know, I'm just a, well, these specific.

Okay, I was thinking it was the truck. Okay, so the charger name got retired. And now it's the ram 1500 rev. Okay. Okay. I'm staying corrected.

I will say also that I really like the EV challenger, which is now called a charger. They'd really try and confuse you with this stuff, but they really do.

So let's just finish on this. I mean, you are looking to buy a new EV and you kind of liked it, too. What, what, what, what didn't sell it or what, what ruined the sale for you at the end for the, for the Dodge challenger.

Oh, it's just really big and heavy. I know I'm not like a big, honky, clunky car. I like like to be more, I mean, I know it's got a lot of power and everything.

But, and it did start to grow on me. Like they talk about, there was all this talk about, oh, I mean, you even mentioned it earlier, like the, how do you, how does Dodge, how do you keep the soul to brand, if you don't have a roaring, you know, heavy engine inside.

But then whatever sound they've come up with the kind of, you know, the fretsonic chamber, the fretsonic chamber, it has this kind of a per that I first, I was like, oh, this is absurd. But then I started to, like really grew on me, it gave the car personality.

I mean, you can't turn it off if you, if you don't like it. Yeah, you can't turn it off. So what did it, I mean, at the end of the day when I moved to Detroit, you know, six years ago, and I had to pick out a car. I said, oh my gosh, this is just, you start to realize undeniable truth about yourself. Like you just match a certain profile.

Yeah. And like that is what you want. And I just don't know that I think it's a really fun car, but I don't know if it's me.

Gabby, I so appreciate you joining us. You are one of my very favorite reporters at Bloomberg. So, yeah, I'm glad we could get you on the show. And thank you for having me.

I recommend that everybody, everybody read it. You can find it on bloomer.com, of course, or you can find it. If you have it, if you're lucky enough to have a Bloomberg terminal, and you can just bio, Gabrielle Coppola, and you can find it there.

Or you can find me on Gabrielle Coppola reports on Instagram. I have an Instagram, you know, where I share a lot of the interesting stories. I'm doing. You could follow me there as well. But I really appreciate you guys and all the like actual car knowledge and cred that you both bring to our, I think together we're a fearsome fearsome force.

Thank you so much. Our trio. Awesome. Our trio.

That does it for this week show. Remember to follow and subscribe to Bloomberg cop pursuit on Apple Spotify and anywhere else you listen. You can also send us your comments. We do read them and we do try to respond as much as we're able.

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Porsche 911

Rolls-Royce Ghost

Rolls-Royce Silver Spur

Fiat 500

Jeep Brand

Dodge Charger

Dodge Challenger

Ford Mustang

Chevrolet Camaro

Dodge Ram

Jeep Compass

Jeep Cherokee

Jeep Wrangler

Alfa Romeo Tonale

Bmw 3

Alfa Romeo Stelvio

Challenger Hellcat

About this episode

Original notes