“Firing the engineering department is like eating seed corn.”
I just listened to an unnamed mechanical engineer who was laid off from Stalantis yesterday. He said the company was outsourcing its engineering to India and other offshore destinations. That’s a very real prospect and India, China and other nations have been graduating an ever-increasing number of engineers. Many of those engineers are trained right here. You can live a middle-class lifestyle in Mumbai for a fraction of the same lifestyle in the US.
I watched a car guy blog, and the presenter went from car to car in a Stalantis lot showing the price stickers. Their cheapest Jeep SUV was in the low forties, which he said was not competitive with the CRV and other similar footprint cars. The lot he showed as stuffed with vehicles. The trucks were in the seventy to a hundred-thousand-dollar class.
I remember when Studebaker was on the ropes (’cause I’m that old) and the lots were full of cars because no one wanted a car where the manufacturer and dealers wouldn’t be around. I think that plays into the problem they’re having now. Especially when the company is talking about going electric which not even Greenies believe will happen. (The Biden administration is way behind the curve on this one. Politics. What can I say?)
Another problem is, I don’t think people actually want five hundred horsepower cars. I was at a car club meeting in March at the local Ford dealer. Their rep, a super-Ford-pumper guy mentioned they hadn’t sold a Mustang since December. He went on to point at the row of five hundred horsepower cars saying, “the average Mustang has never been so powerful. I don’t understand.” The guys in the club with ultra-high horsepower cars don’t, on average, daily drive them. They aren’t practical. Someone in marketing has f’d up big time. Same thing with Stalantis and their Hemi’s. Probably the average buyer is in his forties, has a family and can’t afford an occasional driver car. If you walk across the lot that’s mostly what they have on sale. The ones that are daily drivers are overpriced for what they are.
Excellent information.
Stellantis is not American
Per Wiki
“Stellantis designs, manufactures, and sells automobiles bearing its 14 brands: Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall.”
Yet Jaguar-Land Rover, despite high prices and relatively poor quality, is selling everything produced, including the 400-500+ horsepower models.