Ultra Rare 1959 Auto Bianchi on 2040-cars

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Stellantis could turn the Fiat 500e into a gasser in Europe

How do you solve a problem like electrification? Sometimes the solution is to consider going back to internal combustion. Automotive News Europe, via Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, reports that Stellantis has asked suppliers for quotes on increasing Fiat 500e production by 100,000 units annually, at the Mirafiori, Italy, plant that builds the electric mini car. The twist in the plot is that plant reps told ANE the additional production would be for an ICE-powered 500, not the battery-electric version. See, Fiat has three challenges with the 500. The first is that 500e isn't hitting the production marks the parent company sought, 90,000 units per year; sales the past two years have been in the 77,000-unit range. The second is that the ICE-powered 500, built in Tychy, Poland, and still the 17-year-old mini car that's slightly smaller than the 500e, can only be sold in Europe until June; that 500 will fall afoul of the same cybersecurity regulations that are shuffling the Porsche Cayman, Boxster, and Macan off the European market. The third is national pride: Italy, and Mirafiori plant workers, want to maintain elevated production figures from the country's only mass-market automaker, and no one's sure the 500e will be able to do that.  Hence the exploration into the costs of alternatives. One idea — stress being on the fact that this is only an idea — is to re-engineer the electric-specific 500e platform to accept a mild-hybrid gas engine. The Mirafiori plant would still build the 500e, and it would add 100,000 units or so of a gas-powered 500. In Europe, the gasser 500 still does numbers. Transport industry JATO Dynamics said that including Abarth models, Fiat sold 108,943 units of the ICE-powered 500. If Stellantis saw fit to spend the money, the rumored engine candidate is the 1.0-liter FireFly three-cylinder, used in the sister Panda mini car, making 69 horsepower in that application.  The cost-benefit calculations run up against at least a couple of walls, one being that if Stellantis went ahead with the plan, the resulting car wouldn't hit the market until late 2025 at the earliest, perhaps two years, according to observers. Fiat also hasn't stepped back from its stated goal of being an EV-only maker in Europe by 2030, leaving a new, gas-powered 500 only four years to pay for itself, at most.

Fiat Chrysler posts $690M Q1 loss

If there is one thing that should be remembered when looking at quarterly and annual earnings, it's that the headline numbers rarely tell the whole story when it comes to an automaker's health. Chrysler's first-quarter earnings are just such an example.
Yes, the Auburn Hills-based manufacturer lost $690 million, which is quite a large sum of money. The reasons for the loss, according to Chrysler, were "Unfavorable infrequent items," which includes a $504 million payment to rid itself of the debts it took on for prepaying the UAW's VEBA healthcare trust. Chrysler was also hit with a $672 million charge to the UAW, which was part of a deal that allowed Fiat to purchase the remaining shares of Chrysler owned by the VEBA.
Ignoring those one-time deals, the first quarter was quite a successful one for Chrysler. It would have made $486 million if you erased the merger costs, which would have been a year-over-year increase of $320 million. Even more promising is the fact that Chrysler snagged the largest increase in market share of any automaker during Q1 at 1.1 percent, bringing its overall share to 12.7 percent of the US market. Chrysler saw a 30-percent improvement in sales of trucks and SUVs, along with an 11-percent increase in year-over-year sales and a 23-percent increase in revenue, to $19 billion.

Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.