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0 pointsgsnedders3y ago0 comments

https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-manufacture... places Stellantis with 30% lower production than VW in 2021.

But the thing that's super stark is how many marquees Stellantis have; I can't help but think that some consolidation and focusing of resources would be beneficial (and I'm well aware that plenty is shared already).

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franch3y ago

They keep all the marquees because they sell better in the various European national markets, but many models are now the same platform with some small aesthetic changes. For example the new electric citroen berlingo / fiat doblo / opel combo are the same car:

https://www.citroen.it/modelli/berlingo/elettrico.html

https://www.fiat.it/e-doblo/e-doblo

https://www.opel.it/veicoli/gamma-combo/combo-e-life/panoram...

gsneddersOP3y ago

Heh, I debated putting a second paragraph about this. And yes, while it's not like they're paying the entire cost of developing a car from scratch each time, there's still a lot of duplication of work.

They still have a fair number of unique parts, they still have a fair amount of individual development and certification, they still have their own parts supply chains… these all add costs compared with literally having the same vehicle.

It's not that I see no reason to have multiple marques—after all, there is meaningful differentiation between the different VW ones, for example. But at some point you've got to stop and ask when you have too many.

touristtam3y ago

Yes and unfortunately that's what Chrysler are well known for. Hopefully their culture of churning rebadged (I am a bit harsh here) car has died with the merger of all of those corporation.

Chrysler has been taken over by different entities throughout the last 40 years but somehow managed to drag the new owner down every time. A bit like Rover before the Chinese takeover.

sokoloff3y ago

Nit: it's marques (brand of car), not marquees (cinema entrance).

whalesalad3y ago

They’ve given all the brands a budget and a time box to turn things around. Those that do will be retained, the others will go. My wife was a chemist there for a few years, since before it became Stellantis.

lotsofpulp3y ago

Stellantis is where all the brands with slipping or already low quality go, so having a lot of different brands at various price points is their thing.

sofixa3y ago

That's unfair. Maybe that was somewhat true to an extent for the American part of FCA, but isn't for PSA and Opel. The latter were in not great shape under GM for decades, but were turned around by PSA in a few years. Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Opel have good reputation.

jmrm3y ago

I don't know in the last 5 years, but Opel had a lot of different faults due to cost cutting measures, and depending of the model and the year of the different Peugeot and Citroën, it has or not lot of problems.

One one hand, we have the examples of those models that had the infamous FAP HDi 110 hp engine that gives a lot of problems, and Citroën's "Hydractive" (hydropneumatic) suspension was discarded due to the many problems they gave. We had a 1st gen Citroën C5, that had those two, and it needed to visit the garage every every 2 year to have some pretty costly repairs. Also, some of their newer cars with AdBlue have factory design problems in this system, and repairing that module is knowing that is gonna be relatively expensive and it's gone to fail in the future.

On the other hand, we had models like the Xsara, the 206, the 406, the C15, the Partner/Berlingo combo, and many others that were very reliable cars that rarely had problems.

kergonath3y ago

Peugeot seem to be doing ok in terms of quality in the last decade. It seems to me that they do a lot of horizontal segmentation, having the same cars sold under different brands in different markets.

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