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Chrysler to accelerate production of 2013 Ram and V6 engines

Chrysler is adding a third shift at its Warren Truck plant to meet demand for the new 2013 Ram pickup. And with tight supplies of its Pentastar V6, the company is also boosting output at its Mack Engine plant.
The expansions will add 1,250 jobs and are part of a $238 million investment by Chrysler in the Detroit area. Warren's third shift will begin work sometime in the spring, a Chrysler rep told Automotive News. Mack's increased Pentastar production a could include both 3.6 and 3.2-liter engines.
The company says it also plans to invest $40 million in its Trenton Engine plant to allow for production of a 3.2-liter V6 as well as the Tigershark inline-four for the upcoming Jeep Liberty replacement.

Ram to go on a Rampage with new small pickup?

When people look back at today's automotive industry, what do you think they'll remember us for? The emergence of hybrids? Ever more expensive and exotic supercars? The dawn of the self-driving car? All likely scenarios, but so is the blurring of lines between one bodystyle and another, giving rise to hardtop convertible coupes and crossovers of every shape and size. But one bodystyle the North American auto industry has stayed largely away from in the past couple of decades is a car nose and chassis with a pickup bed.
It's a bodystyle immortalized by the Chevrolet El Camino, but with few exceptions, we haven't seen too many of these automotive platypuses in recent years on our turf. Subaru tried with the Baja and the low-volume Honda Ridgeline soldiers along largely unchanged, but the genre's biggest adherents are still Down Under, where ute versions of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon live. With a few other examples scattered to the four corners of the earth, that's really about it. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it looks like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could be working to bring it back.
Spied undergoing testing in Michigan, what we appear to be looking at is a heavily disguised Fiat Strada being prepared - like the Fiat Ducato-based Ram ProMaster and the smaller Doblo-based ProMaster City - for Stateside duty as a Ram product. The Strada, for those unfamiliar, is a product of Fiat Automóveis in Brazil and is based on the Palio economy car. The nameplate has been around South America since 1996 and was originally designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (long before Volkswagen monopolized his talents), and takes a more rugged approach in the form of the Strada Adventure.

Fiat Chrysler wins top Total Quality Award for first time

The Strategic Vision Total Quality Awards are 20 years old in 2015, and Chrysler has never topped the awards before. Until now, that is. Fiat Chrysler takes the overall award on the corporate level with six segment leaders from Fiat, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram. The Fiat 500 won Small Multi-Function Car, the 500e won Small Alternative Powertrain, the Dodge Challenger tied at the top in the Specialty Coupe category alongside the very un-coupe Mini Cooper Countryman, the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited took the Entry SUV category, the Dodge Durango won in Mid-Size SUV, and Ram took the overall in Best Non-Luxury Brand. The accolade means FCA has gone from one segment winner in 2010 to overall victory in five years. Cars have gotten so good, says Strategic Vision, that it is harder than ever to win. In fact, says the group, 18 years ago 85 percent of all vehicle brands had more than half a problem per vehicle. This year, no brand has more than half a problem per vehicle. The organization measures "over 155 specific aspects of the customer's experience," and scores are based on input from more than 46,000 customers. Other notables in and near the winner's circle include Volkswagen and General Motors, who tied for second place on the corporate scale, one point behind FCA. The Mini Cooper Roadster scored the highest of any model, the Corvette Stingray Convertible and Coupe scored the second- and third-highest. The Chevrolet Colorado is the first domestic Standard Pickup winner in more than ten years, and the Nissan Titan carried the Full-Size Pickup category. The press release below has all the details on how winners and losers are selected, and the full list of automakers and how they finished. "The Customer's 'Total' Experience Defines Quality, Fiat Chrysler Scores Highest in Total Quality," says Strategic Vision The 2015 Total Quality Awards® SAN DIEGO, Friday, July 17, 2015 — Unknown to many, when some consumer research firms rank a car company's quality performance they often do so by simply "counting problems." In the past, this may have been acceptable, but in today's modern and efficient manufacturing world the difference between the worst brand and best brand is LESS than half-a-problem per vehicle. Thus, any "quality ranking" based on this method is severely lacking in the complete picture of the "Total" Quality experience that customers actually use to judge their product ownership.