1971 Fiat 500l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Fiat brand chief reassigned then resigns amid flagging sales

Jason Stoicevich was replaced as head of the Fiat brand in North America just the other day. He was immediately reassigned to another job within Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. But according to Automotive News, Stoicevich quit the new job – and the company altogether – the very next day. The development comes amidst flagging sales for the Fiat brand in America. The introduction of the awkward-looking 500L multi-purpose vehicle has been largely regarded as a sales disaster in the US. Despite having just introduced the new 500X into the growing crossover market, and an overall upward trend across FCA group sales, the Fiat brand's figures have been dropping all year. While the Italian brand's volume has fluctuated from month to month compared to last year's sales, the number of cars its dealers sells on an average day has been firmly in decline. Fiat's downward trend reflects a general tendency in the market towards larger vehicles at the expense of smaller ones. However, the powers that be in Auburn Hills evidently felt that a change of leadership was in order, so it placed Dodge chief Tim Kuniskis in charge of all the company's mass-market passenger-car brands – namely Dodge, Chrysler, and Fiat – and moved Stoicevich to running the group's fleet and small-business operations. Stoicevich remained in charge of the company's California Business Center, but it seems as though he was as dissatisfied with the switch as his superiors were with the performance of the brand over which he presided, and so he apparently elected to step down and leave the company.

The Fiat 500X packs 2.4 liters of disappointment

Our long-term 2016 Fiat 500X is a fine little crossover that's nearly undone by a underwhelming and often frustrating powertrain. The 2.4-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder/nine-speed automatic combo can be found in a number of FCA products. In every single application I've used this engine, the takeaway has been the same: It's a boat anchor. I like our 500X, I really do. I haven't spent as much time behind the wheel as I would like, but I've put thousands of miles on its platform twin, the Jeep Renegade, and two vehicles are essentially the same underneath. The Tigershark 2.4-liter makes 180 horsepower and 175 lb-ft of torque, good numbers on paper, but in practice the engine is buzzy and slow to rev. The engine feels dated. In contrast, the base 1.4-liter turbocharged engine feels much more lively despite being down 20 horsepower. The low-end grunt is owed to the 9 additional pound-feet of torque the engine makes over the 2.4-liter. It may not match it on the top end, but not many people are running a 500X to redline. The issue I have is that the 2.4-liter is the only available option on the higher-spec models like our Trekking Plus, so if you want some options you're stuck with this engine. The 2.4-liter is exclusively paired to a 9-speed automatic transmission that's built by ZF. As great as some of ZF's other gearboxes are, this 9-speed is varying degrees of bad in every application that I've used it, including the Honda Pilot, Acura TLX, and Jeep Cherokee and Renegade. Shifts can be abrupt, and the manic transmission is constantly hunting in an effort to find the most fuel-efficient gear. More than once I've been left waiting for a kick down in order to move with some gusto. Don't let my harping about the powertrain warp your vision of the 500X. It's a fun little vehicle and arguably Fiat's best product (the 124 Spider is mostly Mazda), but it's frustrating when a pleasant little crossover is brought down by such a lackluster powertrain, made worse by knowing the 1.4-liter is so much better. There's an easy fix, Fiat: Offer the 1.4-liter in all engine trims. And to be fair, it's almost kind of fun around a racetrack. See the video below. Related Video:

Final Toledo Jeep decision may have nothing to do with city's efforts

Toledo, OH is doing all that it can to keep production of the Jeep Wrangler in its boundaries, but the biggest issue facing the plant may be insurmountable, no matter how desperately the city wants to keep the Wrangler local. The Wrangler is built in a rather interesting manner at the Toledo Supplier Park: Fiat Chrysler only handles the very final assembly of each vehicle, while two other companies, Kuka, a German firm, and Hyundai-Mobis, a member of the sprawling Hyundai empire, produce the body and chassis, respectively. The vehicles are then transferred over to the FCA part of the park, where they're painted and completed. This was, as The Detroit News explains, a convenient arrangement back in 2006 when the supplier park opened. Chrysler, which was still owned by Daimler at the time, arranged for Kuka and Mobis to handle production, saving it a huge sum of money. Both suppliers own their own machinery and buildings and employ their own workers. Now that FCA is a relatively healthy entity, though, there's not a lot of need to be sharing profits with two other companies. "What [FCA boss Sergio Marchionne] would like is to have the advantages of high-capacity utilization, owning that capacity and taking advantage of that for himself versus having a supplier doing some of the things his competitors do internally," David Cole, chairman emeritus at the Ann Arbor, MI-based Center for Automotive Research, told The News. "It really adds another level of complexity to the situation." While Sergio Marchionne is a man that generally gets what he wants, it seems unlikely that either Mobis or Kuka would give up their role quietly. According to Jon Zapf, Mobis North America's chairperson for UAW Local 12, the company "definitely wants to maintain their part of this production process." According to The News, Jeep is likely to announce the location of next-generation Wrangler production in June. Expect to hear much more on this one in the coming months.