2024 Ram 1500 Trx Final Edition on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Stellantis sees vehicle loan durations extended amid banking turmoil

Stellantis is seeing clients seeking longer-term financing and leasing deals for their vehicles as a consequence of higher global interest rates, the carmaker's head for the business said. Chief Affiliates Officer Philippe de Rovira said loans which normally had a three-year maturity were now increasingly moved to four years. "This allows customers to get a car for a monthly instalment that is similar to that they had before," he said. The world's third largest carmaker by sales on Tuesday announced it had completed a plan announced in late 2021 to reshuffle and simplify its leasing and financing operations in Europe. Under its terms, Stellantis created a 50-50 single long term multi-brand leasing company named Leasys with Credit Agricole Consumer Finance. It also set up local joint ventures in European countries for its new Stellantis Financial Services unit, formerly Banque PSA Finance, with BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Santander Consumer Finance. "These banks have always had better funding conditions than those we can have as an automaker," de Rovira said. Benefits of the plan included cutting the number of financing and leasing entities the group runs in each country and the number of IT systems it uses, with expected savings exceeding 30% in this particular area, he added. De Rovira said the group had a huge portfolio of orders it had not yet delivered due to supply chain shortages impacting production. "Demand is not our main issue. The issue is to deliver as fast as we can cars that are in our order portfolio, which is still at record levels," he said. The group aims to expand its corporate leased vehicle fleet to more than one million units in 2026 and to double net income from its so-called banking activities to 5.8 billion euros ($6.3 billion) by 2030. De Rovira said Stellantis was not seeing a downward trend in vehicle pricing. "Probably the significant price increases we have seen in 2021 and 2022 will not be repeated because the context is changing, but for the moment we don't see decreases, we see stabilisation". ($1 = 0.9188 euros) (Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari and Gilles Guillaume; Editing by Jan Harvey) Earnings/Financials Plants/Manufacturing Alfa Romeo Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM

Dead man went unnoticed in pickup at airport for nearly 8 months

The Kansas City Star reports that on Sept. 12, Lenexa, Kan., police found a dead man in the cab of his Dodge Ram 1500 at the Kansas City International Airport. Though a disturbing thing to find at any time, the scene was made all the worse by the fact that the body had been sitting in that truck for eight months. That's right, for virtually all of 2017 to date. It seems likely that the missing man, Randy Potter, committed suicide, and it likely happened the night he was reported missing, which according to KCTV 5, was Jan. 17. This is because, according to the Chicago Tribune, Potter's parking ticket was printed that day. The fact that it took eight months to find Potter is astonishing. Although the Associated Press reports that Potter's body was covered by a blanket and the windows of the Ram were tinted, those aren't really excusable excuses. Potter's truck was in a large parking lot, one that holds nearly 6,000 cars, according to the Kansas City Star, but that shouldn't have mattered, since the company in charge of the lot, S-P+, was supposed to take an inventory of every car in the lot every single night. Plus, Potter's family took the license plate number of the truck to the parking lot security companies not long after his disappearance. Clearly no one from the parking company was watching closely. As for the police, the Star reports that they never checked the airport since there wasn't any evidence to say he might have gone there. Yet they say they spent "several hundred man hours" on the case, and their operating theory was that he had left his family. One way people leave is by plane. So how was the body finally discovered? Someone who parked nearby complained of a horrible smell. After eight months, no doubt. It's puzzling that no one would have reported a smell sooner. Though the problem would have been bad enough in winter and spring, it would have become pretty intense in the summer months, with high temperatures in the 90s translating into incredible heat inside a truck on shadeless pavement under the relentless Missouri sun. Related video:

FCA fibbed on sales according to internal report

Following last week's news that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is under investigation by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly fudging sales figures, a new report in Automotive News says an internal investigation at FCA uncovered misreported sales. According to the AN story, 5,000 to 6,000 vehicles from various FCA brands were reported sold by dealers, but no customers existed for those cars. FCA sales chief Reid Bigland has already put a stop to the practice. One potential reason for the practice was to maintain the company's month-to-month sales increase streak, currently at 75 months. In April, FCA added a lengthy disclaimer to its sales announcements: "FCA US reported vehicle sales represent sales of its vehicles to retail and fleet customers, as well as limited deliveries of vehicles to its officers, directors, employees and retirees. Sales from dealers to customers are reported to FCA US by dealers as sales are made on an ongoing basis through a new vehicle delivery reporting system that then compiles the reported data as of the end of each month. "Sales through dealers do not necessarily correspond to reported revenues, which are based on the sale and delivery of vehicles to the dealers. In certain limited circumstances where sales are made directly by FCA US, such sales are reported through its management reporting system." FCA did not provide comment to Automotive News. Click through for the full story and more details. Related Video: Earnings/Financials Government/Legal Chrysler Dodge Fiat Jeep RAM sales Sergio Marchionne FCA USDOJ reid bigland