I was excited to read a long feature this morning on the ongoing drama at Stellantis. It’s well-reported, though much of it is a reheat of the tea we’ve already sipped. Buried in the ongoing travails of the Elkann clan (the El-clann, is that a thing? Can I make that a thing?) was some insight into how the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Alfa Romeo, Kurts, Maserati, and a bunch of other brands ended up with an internal hire for its new CEO.
The job of Stellantis CEO is described in the piece as being “a sort of United Nations ambassadorship,” so The Morning Dump is going to go global today. First, there’s Mexico. It’s been courting Chinese investment and products, but you gotta dance with them that brung ya, so Mexico seems willing to trade a favorable trade relationship with the Asian nation in exchange for consideration from the United States. Will a 50% tariff be enough to keep Chinese automakers out? Probably not! The cars are just that cheap.
Trade norms between Asia and North America were shattered last week with a raid on a Hyundai-LG plant that was under construction in Georgia. President Trump invited those people he’d previously handcuffed to stay. Can you guess how many did?
‘Outside Talent Wasn’t Exactly Clamoring For The Job’ Says New Report
The ouster of Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares was not surprising, especially if you’d been paying the least bit of attention to what Stellantis was doing under his watch. While the onset of the pandemic allowed Tavares to print cash for a short period of time by jacking up prices, the direction of the company was nonsensical. In no particular order, here are some of the things for which he’s been criticized:
- Moved some engineering from Italy and the United States to Brazil/India
- Got in a fight with the Italian government for no good reason
- Invested a bunch of money in electric platforms at the expense of everything else
- Killed the hemi
- Filled management with French folks
- Made the dealers mad at him
- Underinvested in Jeep products, focusing instead on the Wagoneer and EV Wagoneer S
That last sin is the focus of the large Bloomberg Businessweek feature on “The Corporate Saga Behind Jeep’s Collapse.” It’s a great read if you haven’t closely followed the issue, but I’m assuming most of you have, so I’m just going to pick out a couple of things that felt new.
First, there’s the implication that the appointment of Antonio Filosa was maybe at least partially a sign that no one else wanted the job:
Filosa’s profile had risen amid an exodus of senior management under Tavares; only seven months earlier he’d been promoted to run the North American operations. But in many ways, anointing him as CEO was a tacit admission of what no one was willing to say aloud: Outside talent wasn’t exactly clamoring for this job.
Who else was being considered? According to the report, Elkann looked in some fairly obvious places:
He’d sounded out José Muñoz, who in November was promoted to become Hyundai Motor Co.’s first non-Korean chief. He considered Mark Reuss, Mary Barra’s No. 2 at GM, and former Fiat Chrysler CEO Manley, who’d gone on to successfully lead the US dealership chain AutoNation Inc. Elkann also was in contact with Luca de Meo, a former Fiat executive who’d executed an impressive turnaround of Renault SA. But by then, de Meo was already lining up a new job outside autos as CEO of Kering SA, the French luxury group that owns Gucci. (A Stellantis spokesperson in an email disputed this characterization, saying “the Board had a number of strong candidates ready to take up the CEO role at the end of the process, both external and internal.”)
I assume the conversation with everyone was something like “Hey, would you like to blow up your sweet gig by coming to Stellantis so you can get yelled at by the French and Italian governments, while also maybe being the 19th person blamed for the death of Jeep?”
That’s a tough sell.
So far, I think Filosa has done a good job, and I’m low-key optimistic about how he’ll do in the job, if only because of this little aside:
Days before Tavares was ousted, Filosa—who speaks fluent Portuguese as well as English and Italian—made a not-so-subtle jab at the soon to be former regime. “Speak whatever language you want—just not French!” he joked to a Bloomberg reporter last November. (He declined to comment for this article.)
Ok, Team Filosa. That’s hilarious.
Mexico Puts A 50% Tariff On Chinese Cars
It’s clear that Mexico benefited greatly from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which shifted a lot of automotive production south of the border. A revision came in the form of the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which still made it possible for automakers to keep production in Mexico.
Given the desire from the second Trump Administration to move production back, Mexico is in a precarious position. On the one hand, Chinese companies like BYD have looked to Mexico as a potential industrial base on this side of the Pacific. On the other hand, this idea freaked out everyone north of the border so badly that Mexico had to quietly back away from supporting Chinese plants in its country.
Now Mexico is getting louder, with an increase in tariffs from 20% to 50%.
Mexico will raise its tariffs on automobiles from China and other Asian countries to 50 percent from a prior level of 20 percent, Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.
“They already have tariffs,” Ebrard told reporters on Sept. 10 when asked about the import levies on China. “What we will do is raise them to the maximum level allowed.”
“Without a certain level of protection, you almost can’t compete,” he added.
[…]
The move comes as President Donald Trump pushes countries in Latin America to limit their economic ties with China, with which it competes for influence in the region.
I think the Mexican government has done about as well as anyone in placating the Trump Administration.
China Can Probably Afford The Tariffs
While the Chinese government seems a bit miffed by what’s happening, the reality is that Chinese cars are already so much cheaper to produce and import that they’re likely to still be competitive. For example, the cheapest legacy OEM EV in the country is the Equinox, which costs about 876,000 pesos, compared to 399,800 pesos for the BYD Dolphin.
The Equinox is a bigger and much better car, but affordability is still an issue. Plus, China is already well integrated into the country, as Bloomberg reports:
Michael Dunne, chief executive of Dunne Insights and a former president of General Motors Indonesia, said higher tariffs on Chinese imports will slow the flood, but not stop it.
“There are already several hundred thousand Chinese cars running on Mexican roads and scores of Chinese car dealerships,” he said. “That Chinese beachhead doesn’t just vanish.”
This will be interesting to watch.
Only One South Korean Worker Wanted To Stay
I had a long story about the raid on the Hyundai plant earlier this week, so I’m not going to go into too many details. Most of the workers are heading back to South Korea, though they were reportedly invited to stay:
President Donald Trump offered to allow hundreds of South Korean workers arrested at a Hyundai-LG battery plant during an immigration raid to stay in the U.S., but only one has opted to remain, South Korean officials said.
Trump’s overture sought to encourage the workers to stay and train Americans, according to the officials. It resulted in a one-day delay to the departure of a chartered plane to bring the workers home.
The plane is now scheduled to leave the U.S. later in the day. TV footage showed the workers boarding buses outside the barbed-wire clad fences of a detention center at around 2 a.m. on Sept. 11 to go to Atlanta airport.
Unlike other U.S. deportations, they were not handcuffed – satisfying a key demand from South Korea, which has been horrified by the raid, particularly by the use of armored vehicles and shackles.
South Korea still seems big mad about this, which is clear from this Nikkei Asia article:
Moon Young-ju could not contain his anger when he heard the news that over 300 South Koreans had been detained after U.S. immigration authorities last week raided a joint Hyundai Motor-LG Energy Solution battery factory under construction in the state of Georgia.
The 54-year-old former merchant protested in front of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Seoul on Wednesday with a yellow banner reading: “Yankees go home. Get out america army.”
“I came here because I was so upset,” Moon said after lighting a cigarette. “We invested as they demanded. We built factories as they demanded. It’s our blood, sweat and tears.”
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I absolutely adore Self Esteem, and her video for “The Curse” only confirms this feeling for me. There are a lot of great artists coming out of the UK, from the Howitzer-voiced Adele to up-and-comer Lola Young. What I love about Self Esteem is that she always seems to be in conversation with herself, as opposed to other people.
The Big Question
Is there any car company you’d like to be CEO of?
Top photo: Stellantis
Sure, I’ll take a large pay increase. My first move, though, would be to cut my own pay and the pay of my successor and cap it at some small multiple of the median employee. I think I could convince the board that it would improve morale and retention of the rank and file, save money, and be great PR. And I’d still be making more money than I need by a long shot, so I’d be happy, too.
Beyond that, I’d try to work with all the people below me who definitely know more than I do about what works and what doesn’t.
Based on everything I’ve seen from our so-called business “leaders”, you clearly aren’t qualified to play in their sandbox.
That said, I love your thought process. You’re the kind of person I’d go to work for any day.
“President Donald Trump offered to allow hundreds of South Korean workers arrested at a Hyundai-LG battery plant during an immigration raid to stay in the U.S., but only one has opted to remain, South Korean officials said.”
For me, the insult of being arrested would make me send a big FUCK YOU as a response to Trump’s ‘day late, dollar short’ overture.
Stay to train Americans after treating me like shit? FAAAAAAAAK YOUUUUUUU.
And I’m guessing that’s why only one (likely desperate) person took up the offer.
“Is there any car company you’d like to be CEO of?”
ACTUALLY I would like to be CEO of Stellantis. It’s already fucked up so even if what I do is marginally competent, I’ll still look really good compared to the last guy.
I also have some strong opinions regarding the direction Stellantis needs to go… particularly with Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.
Bol?! Yeos meog-eola, neukdari-michigang-i!
(What?? Fuck you, old lunatic!)
I’ve been watching too many K-dramas lately. Anything to escape this nightmare.
Could be worse. I got addicted to Bargain Hunt on the “live” section of Prime last month while recovering from Surgery. Am I going to watch another episode of random Brits losing money trying to buy and sell antiques?
YES (leg kick).
(So, you don’t get addicted seeing what I am talking about, they end every episode saying “Yes” and doing a leg kick. It is so stupid and lame, looks to be a hold out from some bit from around 1820… or about when half the contestants had their first grand-child)
“Speak whatever language you want—just not French!”
It tells a lot about him, and also a lot about the author who finds it hilarious.
(Someone should start to de-merger Stellantis to save PSA, and let FCA rot with all the “french bad!” stupidity, that very likely already fueled all the negative press about Stellantis – and Hardigree is a part of this problem.)
While I agree that pillorying the French is lazy, cliched, and generally based on ignorance about them being historical cowards, I wonder if the comment here could be a reference to the former CEO’s appointed French managers and the poor job they’ve done, I assume, by neglecting non-French marques in the lineup to the detriment of the whole organization?
You mean “your mother is a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” isn’t an effective war tactic? I’m shocked!
The French were clearly competent enough to a) already have a Grail* and b) have advanced bovine re-entry vehicle targeting so I’d say they were doing pretty well!
*non primary sources needed
What percent of those french managers’ poor job was caused by the “french bad!” and the “not american enough” attitude? (While Marchione gets aplauded for his americannes, despite that his whole plan was to build the same cars until they can merge with another company. Now this might be the plan the french have to follow too.)
I don’t work for Stallantis, so I couldn’t know if this is some kind of scapegoating, but many of the brands are floundering and they’re presiding over it.
I’d love to lead Stellantis, though I know the public perception I’ll give myself would rival Carlos, in a non-costing cutting way though.
I’ve seen the insides of too many OEM automakers to want to be a part of the culture that has been breeding there. That goes more than double for the Detroit-three, their management culture is toxic.
I’m also insufficiently German to be considered for VW, MB, BMW. I cannot see them hiring an auslander.
20 years ago, I worked with an American guy who had worked for BMW in their main plant for quite some time, so it has been done. Not sure it would be feasible more, though.
I’ll be the CEO of Tesla. It sounds like there is enough free time to run a few other companies, travel with politicians, father many children, play video games and be a social media troll. I wouldn’t do any of those things, but I would spend lots of time with my kids.
IDK. The money’s good, but I would be afraid of sitting in that chair and getting poisoned by the second hand Ketamine from the previously occupant’s butt-sweat.
Finding a CEO.
They should have asked me. It’s my life goal to be a CEO. Sort of. I want to be an EX-CEO. I would work for what I make now, as long as I get a 7 figure buy out.
The company can sell stock, hire me, watch the values crash and then buy back their stock. When they fire me for screwing things up, they can sell the stock the bought cheap when I was screwing up and easily make enough to make up for the 7 figure buyout they had to pay during the rebound
It’s a win/win for everyone. Unless I can’t find a way to screw up worse than who I replaced.
Wait. Never mind, I’m not sure if I can screw things up bad enough to justify the giant payout to become an Ex-Ceo and have an extremely comfortable retirement for my great-grandkids.
I’ll look for Plan B. Ex-College Football Coach.
“Hey Alabama! For what you are going pay the current coach to leave, I won’t show up in the first place. Heck, I’ll give you a deal, I’ll do that for half the price. If you need receipts from a company credit card, I can provide that.”
I was going to pretty much say the same thing! I totally would have worked for them for a year or two to get a 7 figure payout at the end. Hell, I’m willing to bet not everything I’d do would even turn out terribly for them.
That’s my fear. I need to suck as a CEO bad enough to get canned. But deep down, I am a car guy and would make decisions that would make popular cars, even by accident. As a result, I would likely do better working as a CEO of a car company than most. Which sucks, because I would actually have to work for the money.
So, I’m going to keep watching Alabama Football. I figure it will be just a matter of months before they fire Not-Saban and have an opening for someone. Better yet, they have a history of paying people to not coach in the first place.
In this case, I KNOW I won’t last. I was on 5 losing teams in pee-wee football before I got cut from a 0-10 team. I used to get my butt kicked by the computer on Celecovision football. I figure I’ll get beat by someone like Vanderbilt even with all the talent Alabama can get..
Oh wait, same goes for Not Saban…
Crap, maybe I need a Plan C.
Made me think of the Huddsucker Proxy. Fun movie, classic Coen brothers.
It’s like beating your best friend bloody then immediately asking them to go have a beer and play darts with you.
Isn’t that a typical night at the Pub in Newcastle?
I’d run Volvo, then buy NEVS. Swedish supergroup complete.
Please bring SAAB back if that happens!
I guess it is beyond this administration’s imagination that for worker bees traveling for work kinda sucks. To get dicked around in a strange country while doing so probably isn’t fun, so when offered a chance to go back home you are going to take it.
I used to travel internationally for highly-specialized, highly-technical consulting work and the few times I had even minor bumps on my work visas I was more than happy to head back home if asked. The risk of being stuck in another country, potentially in jail, regardless of the cause, isn’t worth trying to make some middle-manager back home happy.
Yep, international work travel for engineering/project management is dicey to begin with.
I don’t think European ownership understands the allure of Jeep. I was on the Rubicon Trail in the 90’s right around the time of the Chrysler-Mercedes “merger” and on the trail was about 15 jeeps with Mercedes employees in them. There was a Jeep Executive leading the show and he had them out there showing them the essence of what Jeep is. I talked the the Jeep guy and he was frustrated that the Germans did not get the Jeep experience. This seems to be happening all over again. The luxury SUV is just a commodity that can be cross shopped between a bunch of brands (Grand Wagoneer, Escalade, Navigator, X7, GLS, LX) not so much with the Wrangler.
Sergio seemed to get it, or at least got enough to know to stay out of the way and let them do their thing. Mike Manley as well.
where the German really missed the mark in the 90’s was the Steyr-Puch option. Make a G wagon SP for the masses, including Jeep Peeps, and let the G wagon continue up the ladder to Merc overpriced, but capable land cruiser.
As a New Englander living under occupation who doesn’t see the fuss about German cars, I don’t get Jeep, either. A Wrangler was one of the worst vehicles I’ve ever driven and I thought I knew what to expect. I thought it would be fun in an agricultural way, but it made a garden tractor seem like a Bentley. Add to that the brand’s general bad reliability, ride, efficiency, and what seems like inexplicably high prices and I’m at a complete loss. The “great” square body 4.0 Cherokee that my friend had continual, Malaise-era quality issues with from new, the GC that seemed like any other mediocre kind of higher end SUV, other Jeeps-in-name unibodies like shittier compact cars . . . I don’t get any of it. So, yeah, I wouldn’t want to be CEO of Stellantis.
South Korea and the citizens of South Korea have every right to be furious at the US right now. From what I found (https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/workers-say-korea-inc-was-warned-about-questionable-us-visas-before-hyundai-raid-2025-09-09/), the US didn’t have its act together on the visa front. And now their citizens have been harmed by being treated like criminals when the US government couldn’t make an appropriate category to allow that specific kind of work. That nobody in the US can do. On the one hand the US government want(s/ed) this investment. On the other hand it didn’t create the correct administrative process to let the skilled South Korean workers build the plant. So the South Koreans ended up shackled and jailed in a detention facility through no fault of their own, pawns in immigration and foreign investment chess. I wonder if that plant will ever produce a single battery cell.
Stellantis probably needs to structure itself more like GM used to be, or like how Berkshire Hathaway is now. A decentralized holding company of a buch of disparate, independently run businesses under a common ownership. Its too big and complex of a behemoth to try and micromanage from thr top down, scale back the CEO’s role by delegating most of it to the CEOs of local subsidiaries who truly understand their own brands, operations, and markets.
Berkshire works that way because the companies it owns are so different. GM more or less collapsed because it didn’t get the economies of scale from having them all be independent. Stellantis needs to do the hard work and kill some brands even if it hurts some feelings because of “heritage”
GM stopped having them be independent decades before they collapsed, you can actually trace the start of their market share decline to when they stripped divisions of their autonomy
Possibly, but the rise of the imports around the same time, and the fact that Ford and Chrysler declined around the same time make it much less clear cut
It’s a correlation, not a causation, but the fact is they were more successful before Roger Smith’s restructuring than they were after (and had teetering on the brink of bankruptcy at one point, about 18 years before officially filing)
It’s probably both. Badge engineering looks great to the bean counters, but doesn’t play all that well with the customers.
Exhibit A (then): Cadillac Cimarron
Exhibit B (now): Dodge Hornet
Chrysler made a good go of it with the K car for a short while, but ultimately they eventually had to diversify to more platforms, and yet there still wasn’t enough there to save poor old Plymouth.
And now Stellantis is doing a pretty effective job of killing off what’s left of both Dodge and Chrysler, with (apparently) more carnage to follow.
Munoz and Reuss in particular would have to be insane to join the shitshow that is Stellantis. Hyundai/Kia is hitting it out of the park and GM under Barra is NOT GM under Roger Smith.
I’d take a shot at being CEO of Tesla, under the condition of the previous CEO getting his palladium parachute and had to relinquish all interest in the company. Not sure that would even be economically feasible for the company.
But then I’d have them redesign and rename the Cybertruck, cancel the model X and make an SUV on the truck platform, add some switches and buttons to all models, instead of a roadster make a convertible/Targa model S grand tourer.
Re: Hyundai Plant, only one out of 300 Korean Nationals wanted to stay. 1/3 of a percent. This is what the current administration does not understand, when someone comes from a fully developed country, with a good job, on a task for their company to do what the administration is begging for, and then is treated like a criminal, they leave happily. I think the administration genuinely believes they can treat any person from a foreign country like they treat immigrants from Central and South America.
The reality is not everyone comes to the US, legally or otherwise, because they are desperate to build a better life outside of their home country. You can’t just bully people into submission when they have better option elsewhere. The truly insane part about that foreign policy strategy is the ones with better things to do at home are generally the ones you want to incentivize because they have something we don’t. Playground bully works great in small settings, but is a self-inflicted death sentence on a global scale where someone else is always going to take advantage of a good deal when they can.
It just continues to speak to the utter incompetence and shortsightedness of the current administration. Its policies are foisted upon the general public without forethought of repercussions, and then the WH press wing gaslights, lies, and spins every failure into a triumphant victory of the highest order. Not to mention everything that cannot be spun into a victory is pitched as “a radical left plot/scheme/conspiracy” because accountability requires humility and transparency.
Yep, F-off. Screw you guys, I’m going home.
If your point here is that “only one out of 300 Koreans stayed,” then maybe the bigger question is why Hyundai couldn’t figure out how to operate within U.S. labor law in the first place. The company clearly wanted a shortcut: bring in a workforce on terms that wouldn’t fly if they were American citizens or permanent residents. That’s not about foreign policy, that’s about a multinational trying to game the system. Do you boot lick multi-national corporations now?
And yes, when you rely on illegal or gray-area labor, wages do get undercut. That’s Economics 101. You flood the market with workers who aren’t in a position to negotiate fairly, and it drives down pay for everyone else. The whole reason we have labor standards, visas, and immigration laws is to prevent exactly that dynamic.
So maybe the real lesson from the Hyundai plant isn’t that the administration is incompetent, it’s that U.S. enforcement finally called a bluff. If Hyundai wants to operate here, they should invest in hiring and training American workers at fair wages, or bring in skilled staff legally under the visa system. Every other global company that sets up shop here has to do it.
Otherwise, what you’re really defending isn’t “talent” walking away — it’s a business model built on cheap, disposable labor.
I don’t think you know what’s going on. They didn’t just ship in a bunch of randos to work at a car plant to save money – these people were specialists in battery tech and were essential to getting the plant up and running. They were not supposed to stay here permanently, but our all-knowing benevolent leader still rounded them up and humiliated them like a bunch of criminals anyway.
And some of them brought in did have Visas, but were rounded up and detained exactly the same. A lack of discernment and poor treatment and optics of the process are not likely to be viewed as a reason to stay in the US. Being paraded through the streets while shackled is hardly a nice experience.
My point here is more the wildly conflicting goals of what the current administration is trying to achieve. They want massive investment in this country, which they admittedly got from Hyundai. However, what DHS and ICE has done is show wonton disregard for the legal proceedings around immigration and labor laws, rounding up people regardless of legal status, US citizens often included, and in this case including at least some valid Visa holders. To then pivot and say “hey you can actually stay if you’d like” WITHOUT those people is equally hypocritical. It speaks to what I mentioned the admin has done, do one-off deals that circumvent the law to get what they want.
lets also not forget that Georgia is a state known to be far more lax on labor and immigration control laws for workforces, because it leads to foreign investment in their state for this reason. I’m not here to bootlick Hyundai, what I’m here to call out is that there is a very clear double standard being portrayed, and that when people are brought in to the US on a work assignment, visa or not, then treated like animals and criminals, they are under absolutely zero incentive to stay, and that this will deter foreign investment.
The other side to this is plants of this nature require a significant amount of labor from the parent company/organization/branch to pull off. This battery plant is building Korean tech on US soil, as of now, the vast vast majority of the technology and information is known by Korean Nationals. So if there is appetite to build in the US, those foreign nationals have to be on site to be able to build and train a US workforce. There is no debate that the immigration and Visa process in the US is a complete mess, and applying for and being granted work visas is a tough thing to do. So what this administration has effectively done is demand record-pace foreign investment, while making it functionally impossible to accomplish that timeline legally, and then implementing double standards and extra-legal policies to save face, which fails.
As linked in a comment above, This wasn’t bringing in cheap labour. This was bringing in the expertise to get the damn factory up and running, then inevitably training the people expected to run it long-term.
The Visa process is shit, and in the interest of keeping Current Administration happy, they skirted the rules to get things moving faster.
Two groups are to blame here. Current admin for fumbling all of this so hard, and Hyundai Corporate for willingly shipping the people over, knowing the risks.
Yep and with the current war on education and expertise in the US, it is not a shock that any company would need to bring in non us employees.
In this case, I expect that the equipment in the factory was designed, built, and programmed by a team in South Korea (which is likely a repeat of an existing system they’ve fully debugged locally). This provides the most robust solution to the factory in the US.
It only makes sense for that same team that has the experience designing and integrating that equipment to be the ones to install it, and to train up the local team during the time that it’s being installed and up-and-running in the US. It’s unlikely that the local team knows enough of the equipment to efficiently (and, possibly, safely) takeover mid-installation.
And like a bunch of yokel dumba$$es we arrest them before they were done.
I’ve worked at many new factory commisionings, and I’ll use one as an example. It was the first of it’s kind un-pasteurized juice making facility but that meant from when you first clean the raw incoming fruit, the remainder of the line had to operate in a clean room type environment, and any break to the seal meant that whole line had to go through an 8 hour sterilization process.
The entire spin up of just one production line took about 2.5 years, AFTER the machinery was delivered, and I’d travel there about twice a month during that process. For the general labor work like installing and assembling the machines we had about 10% of our workforce, and 90% was by the purchasing company / whatever contractors they wanted. We were there mainly to do as little work, but supervise that everything was being done correctly so they’d know how to build the next 3 lines and come up with their own few tweaks. When it came to the calibration, fine tuning, customization, etc. (the type of work that pays 2-3 times what the prevailing local salary is) we were about 80% our own employees with the goal of having 2 engineers always shadow us / practice on tweaking the equipment and learning how to troubleshoot.
As soon as this production line was about to be fully running, we started on installing the second line. Took about 9 months with a guy to check on the installation once a week, and 90% their employees doing the calibration and final setup. I only made 1 trip to work around an error in installation.
Lines 3 and 4 took 6 months to spin up, and I’m not even sure if we sent a single person down there.
You can’t hire local talent when what you’re doing hasn’t been built before, and sending highly paid engineers that understand the process as you’re building a factory is NOT a cost cutting measure.
All that said, we don’t really know what the mix of specialized vs commodity labor is, however I just don’t see a well developed country like South Korea whose minimum wage is one and a half times bigger than ours would send over a bunch of workers on their own dime when local ones may be cheaper to hire.
It’s almost like the US is now the 3rd world country trying to develop, asking for help and investment from other countries, to build factories for lower end manufacturing jobs. And needing foreign experts to come do the high end work, due to a lack of local skill and knowledge. Then some government militias end up harassing everyone and screwing the whole thing up.
It is wild in my lifetime that I’ve seen mass offshoring of labor and the workforce training it entails and now we’re back to trying to re shore and workforce training. And I’m not THAT old
Well if I knew they were seriously considering outsiders I would’ve sent my resume in. It’s like Michael Jordan said (maybe), you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
Ummm wasn’t that Wayne Gretzky?
It was Michael Scott.
Are we sure it wasn’t actually Ron Burgundy?
I’d gladly take the job as CEO of, say, Ford. Then I’d also appoint myself as head test driver of Ford Performance and spend most days neglecting my CEO duties.
After. I dunno, six months or so of just hooning the crap out of Mustang GTDs, F150 Raptors, etc, I’d probably get fired, take my golden parachute and go home.
Where I squirreled away all my “test vehicles”.
I wonder how many millions of cheap safety glasses get wasted every year when some carpet walker boss comes out to the shop floor for 5 minutes.
Don’t forget the high vis vest and hard hat
I don’t think I’d want to be CEO, but whatever Bob Lutz’s job was at GM sounds awesome.
If I remember right, he was head of Global Product Development.
Has Stellantis ever considered that it may simply just be too big to function? They’re trying to juggle IDK even how many brands, all of which have wildly different identities and niches while also trying to keep governments on multiple continents happy.
I don’t know if it’s even possible for companies like Stellantis to be broken up, but that seems like the only solution to me. They just expanded so quickly and recklessly without having any real plan for the future.
Agree, the big issue I think is too many brands and silos. Italy vs France vs US, each with different product and market needs and beholden to different governments.
Stellantis is going to collapse under the weight of their own incompetence.
Eventually, their financials will hit a brick wall and major moves will need to be undertaken. I could honestly see their stable of brands being absorbed by other manufacturers.
For Citroen, Peugeot and DS, I could see either a management buyout or some deal with the French government to return them to independence.
For Chrysler, RAM and Dodge, they might likely be snapped up by one of the Western bigs. I don’t see any Asian manufacturer being interested, nor would I see Ford or GM picking them up unless they just want the dealer network as their products have way too much overlap. Of those that remain, only VAG might be suitable.
Fiat and Lancia could get picked up by Tata or BYD possibly. Seeing as how Tata already owns Jaguar and Land Rover, they might be inclined to pick up Alfa Romeo if the others pass on it.
As for Opel/Vauxhall? That’s a wildcard and I have no real clue. Could one of their German peers such as BMW or Mercedes pick them up? Maybe they are the only part that remains with Stellantis? Who knows.
This is a horrifying thought but it’s really the only option that makes sense.
Can anyone imagine what a VW built Dodge Ram would look like? Or even be built like?
To truly imagine a Ram-badged Volkswagen product you’d have to take your mind somewhere so bleak and depressing you may never come back.
If VW has any sense they’d have as little to do with the design/engineering of it as possible and would just control the money.
No reason why they couldn’t federalize the Amarok, make it here and sell it here as a RAM. If the RAM deal to VAG would have included the north american engine plants, they could further differentiate the US Amarok from the global one by dropping a twin-turbo hurricane in there. That would be one hell of a small truck to toot around in.
Routan owners have some idea…
I had a similar thought. Stellantis is too big and not diverse enough in its current state. Anyone signing up to run it is signing up for a rough time trying to win a no-win scenario.
The Kobayashi Maru
They’re not even that big. They have a lot of small brands, they’re just trying to placate too many stakeholders at once to function properly.
Rolls Royce or Lamborghini if those are allowed to fall within the scope, otherwise, nah
I would be the CEO of any of the bigger manufactures no where am I qualified but for Stallantis or Nissan this didn’t seem to matter they still paid failed CEO’s millions so I could just fail enough for a year or 2 and be set for life.
Just dial up some buzzwords, shake some hands, do f-all and two years later take the money? I’m in, but I’m not escaping in a box. That’s out.
All I need to do is say AI at least 100 times during a 10 min presser and I would be set.
Something a long the lines of
“We are currently working on implementing smart AI features to make our new *insert whatever vehicle here* more intuitive. These smart AI features will put the drivers back in control and make the driver feel much more comfortable and safe. The new smart AI is the future of all our vehicles.”
Company I once worked for gave the ousted CEO $64 million. They could have fired me for a 1/10th of that.
Is there any car company you’d like to be CEO of?
Lets see, Old white boy to get millions of dollars a year, can do a completely crap job and change stuff indiscriminately to look like they are doing “something” for change’s sake, then bail with a giant buyout/ golden parachute? Any of them.
or
Competent woman shoved off the glass cliff, No thanks!
“The “glass cliff” is a phenomenon where members of marginalized groups, particularly women, are more likely to be appointed to leadership positions during times of crisis or poor performance, setting them up for a higher risk of failure. “
I’d take a shove off a glass cliff if it came with a golden parachute.
Nope. I’ve seen that level of politics in smaller companies. When you get to large companies, politics is an enormous amount of the job. Far too much.
I’d only consider running a company that size if I could install a trap door to a bottomless pit in strategic locations so I could use them as I saw fit.
Dr. Evil boardroom table perhaps?