Report: Fiat Plans to Brand Chrysler as a True Luxury Automaker
Fiat plans to market Chrysler as a serious luxury brand in the U.S. In an interview with Automotive News, Chrysler’s brand CEO Peter Fong said that he sees the company’s flagship line as “a notch above Lincoln, a notch above Cadillac,” which has us wondering what sort of parallel universe Fong is from.
True, Chrysler did have some success with the 300C, but that’s about it. Since then much of the brand’s products have been cut, while plans for exciting new products – that might just make Fong’s dream a reality – have never come to fruition. Those include the Rolls-Royce-inspired Chrysler Imperial and, more recently, the 200C EV concept.
Fong does, however, say that the company wants to focus the Chrysler brand more on luxury to remove it further from its close relationship with Dodge, which will be more squarely focused on driving performance.
To further burst Fong’s bubble, Chrysler and Fiat have both made it known that there are no new products in the pipeline, which is particularly distressing as automakers like Cadillac have announced several new products, with the LaCrosse and XRS already launched and a new flagship and BMW 3 Series fighter on the way.
[Source: Automotive News via Autoblog]
With AutoGuide from its launch, Colum previously acted as Editor-in-Chief of Modified Luxury & Exotics magazine where he became a certifiable car snob driving supercars like the Koenigsegg CCX and racing down the autobahn in anything over 500 hp. He has won numerous automotive journalism awards including the Best Video Journalism Award in 2014 and 2015 from the Automotive Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Colum founded Geared Content Studios, VerticalScope's in-house branded content division and works to find ways to integrate brands organically into content.
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As reported in the Detroit Free Press, FIAT's new Chrysler division -a company that shed 35,000 jobs over the past two years and and just went through bankruptcy- is already preparing to rehire an unspecified number of salaried workers and ask current workers to put in overtime to get new models to market by mid-2011...
It will be nice to see a more upscale Chrysler, the designs are always interesting, and they hint at thier former upscale selves, just now they place plastic hubcaps and cheap interiors that don't live up to the standard of the imports or even Lincoln...