Every few years there’s a story about how some automaker in Michigan is ticketing its employees for driving competitor vehicles or non-American vehicles in its parking lots. This is a stupid rule, and it always becomes a one-day story for these automakers when security haphazardly tickets a Tesla for not being American or whatever. The fact that Stellantis is doing it is hilarious given that, well, Stellantis is a palimpsest of like 9,000 historical brands.
The Morning Dump would like to take a moment to acknowledge that making cars is hard, and everything seems to be making it harder. Ford, for instance, would love to sell you some F-150s. First, it has to figure out how to make them, given the lack of aluminum. Will this make your next F-150 more expensive? Oh yeah. Also more expensive will be shipping stuff, as USPS adds a fuel charge because of the war we’re fighting for reasons.
You know what I thought a good deal was? Magnus Walker sold a bunch of stuff recently, including the little kit 911 he put together, and it went for a reasonably good price.
C’mon Stellantis, What Are We Doing Here?
I write about Stellantis a lot, so I don’t think I need to remind most of you that Stellantis is a bunch of historically important and mostly failed automakers that have been conglomerated dozens of times. Fiat Chrysler was a mix of Fiat and Chrysler, obviously, and both of those companies were historically retainers of different failed brands (Maserati, Lancia, AMC, Simca, et cetera). Then glommed onto this was Opel, from GM Europe, and PSA, itself a mix of French automakers not associated with Renault. It’s somewhat challenging to think of a brand that’s never been a part of one of the various defunct automakers that now form Stellantis.
You’d think that this would mean that the company would get rid of its very shortsighted policy of making employees with competitive vehicles park far away from the entrance. Michigan gets very cold for a lot of the year, and then gets hit with huge storms at other times. Making someone park in a far off lot because they took their husband’s Honda to work sucks, as David wrote almost exactly ten years ago:
This might sound counterintuitive on the face of it, but employees who drive a competitor’s cars are a company’s biggest asset. They bring perspectives to automotive design and engineering that differ from those of people who have all been driving the same few company-built products throughout the years. There’s no need to punish these competitive-car owners. On the contrary, you want them on your team.
I think that’s absolutely correct. I don’t want writers who only read The Autopian, I want writers who read everything. So has Stellantis abandoned this policy? Of course not! As The Wall Street Journal reports, enforcement is alive and well, and also hilarious:
A Stellantis spokeswoman said preferred parking is reserved for company-branded vehicles. “Employees must adhere to posted signage and communications,” she said.
The results can be confusing and, at times, amusing. One online user said they were ticketed for parking an Eagle Talon sports car in a Stellantis lot, despite Eagle being a long-defunct nameplate from Chrysler, which is now owned by Stellantis.
[…]
Stellantis said that given the company’s long history and broad portfolio of legacy brands, older vehicles may be misidentified by security.
“Stellantis is reviewing its processes to help prevent such situations in the future,” the company said. “Employees are encouraged to contact Corporate Security if they believe a parking warning has been issued in error so it can be reviewed and addressed promptly.”
SO MANY BRANDS! There are so many ex-Stellantis brands!
Ok, let’s take the photo above. What would happen if I drove a Matra-Simca Rancho to Auburn Hills and parked up front? Simca was a French company, founded by Fiat, that then became Chrysler Europe. What was left of Simca was sold to the company that eventually became PSA Peugeot Citroën, which was then merged with Fiat Chrysler to create Stellantis.
What about a Ford Comète? The Comète is a Ford, but Ford SAF was eventually incorporated into Simca. Are all Ford France cars thus, in a way, Stellantis cars?
Good Luck Getting A New F-150 On The Cheap
The Ford F-150 is, typically, one of the most popular vehicles in the world. Ford sells every one it can build. It’s the building them that’s the problem. The F-150 relies on a lot of aluminum, and one of the major plants that provides aluminum for Ford caught on fire last year. Then it caught on fire again.
Can you guess what happens next? The Freep has the inevitable outcome:
The tight inventory could mean car buyers might pay more for an new F-150.
That’s because the Dearborn-based automaker is using what aluminum it can obtain to build more of the profitable high-end trims of the F-150, which have an average list price of about $87,000, said David Greene, principal of Marketplace and Industry Analytics at www.cars.com. Ford is building fewer entry-level F-150s, which have an average list price on Cars.com of about $52,000, Greene said.
Greene said making more of the pricier trims rather than base models is a strategy automakers deployed in 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the supply chain, causing a shortage of semiconductor chips, which carmakers use in vehicle electronics.
If only there were a word for this. Oh, right, Trimflation! Jamie LaRue shall rue the day she didn’t mention trimflation. Or, she won’t at all, and if I see her next week at the auto show, I’ll just be polite and not mention it. But I’ll be thinking it!
Shipping Packages Via The USPS Is About To Get 8% More Expensive
There’s a war. It might end the way it started, which is to say randomly and uncertainly. Either way, gas prices are elevated and likely to stay that way for a bit. This is impacting the postal service, which is going to add a fuel surcharge of 8% to packages according to the WSJ:
The 8% surcharge will begin on April 26, and the current plan is to phase it out on Jan. 17, 2027, the Postal Service said in a statement Wednesday that confirmed earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal. The fee will apply to packages but not letter mail.
Other parcel carriers, including FedEx and United Parcel Service, have imposed fuel surcharges for years—alongside a basket of other surcharges and fees. Both FedEx and UPS have dramatically raised their fuel surcharges in recent weeks as the price of oil has increased amid the turmoil in the Middle East.
Diesel prices reached $5.38 a gallon this week, up 51% from a year earlier.
Conner Oberst would never.
$66,000 For The Kit Bash Magnus Walker 911 Seems Like A Decent Price
Our old pal Magnus Walker auctioned 16 cars and a bunch of other stuff recently, and the whole collection raised about $2 million, including $308k for a 1996 Porsche 911 S. As we mentioned before, this included what’s basically an Urban Outlaw kitbash starter kit. Also, it came with shoes!
The bidding for the starter kit ended at $66,000, which included:
German-delivery 1968 911 L coupe with additional hood, fender, 911 S fiberglass front bumper, 911 R-style louvered quarter windows, rear body panel, and more
Desirable 901/10 911 S 2.0-liter long block
Rare early 901/02 911 S five-speed gearbox
Further accompanied by four Minilite wheels, brake rotors, shocks, early Scheel seat, shifter and replacement dash
Complete with Magnus Walker Special Edition MOMO Prototipo steering wheel, Nike SB Dunk “277” sneakers, hat, and stickers
That’s a lot of kit! It also actually outsold this flat nose conversion by a bit.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
The country music of my youth doesn’t get enough credit for being clever. I think this is both a result of all the shallow, Swedish-produced pop country that followed and the deplatforming of great female artists like Miranda Lambert by country radio. It’s therefore a little encouraging to see Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” performing well. It gets double points for being co-written by Lambert and for the George Strait reference.
The Big Question
What’s the best technically-Stellantis product to drive to Stellantis HQ?
Top photo: Stellantis; Bring a Trailer; DepositPhotos.com
I am for a very specific light blue AMC Gremlin with Flames blasting Bohemian Rhapsody.
I like the cut of your jib, but the Mirthmobile was a Pacer. AMC’s other weird as hell attempt at an economical little hatchback.
Sorry! You are correct I was going off of memory thanks.
Honestly, I think any Pacer movie car would do. The woody Pacer “wagon” from “Oh, God” would also be a solid choice.
Now that I think about it, are there any other movies that feature a Pacer as prominently as those two?
Michael Keaton’s girlfriend drives one in Gung Ho
I’d pull up in a Sherman tank, towing a Saturn rocket first stage. I’d leave behind a Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft gun to reserve my spot so that I would have the same spot for my CMP truck the next day.
Drive the truck first. You don’t have to reserve a spot for the tank.
I think a tank is a VERY effective way of dealing with Meter Maids, LOL.
M1 Abrams or go home. Also a Chyrsler product.
You could mount the Hemi-powered air raid siren on the Sherman just to be on the safe side.
https://www.theautopian.com/chrysler-once-built-the-worlds-loudest-air-raid-siren-and-its-powered-by-a-hemi-v8/
I Would buy a Saturn Astra, and badge swap it with Vauxhall badges.
Bravo. My guess is you could buy a chrysler (or whatever) badge on ebay for a couple bucks and stick it on your F150 (or whatever) and parking enforcement would just roll on by.
A Dodge Raider was company branded.
A Mitsubishi Raider was company built.
Dodge Stealth Twin Turbo. Low enough to pass under any security gate arm, fast enough to outrun any Hemi powered security vehicles. Unstoppable.
The security vehicles are golf carts, so every time they stop to ticket someone, they need to receive a ticket themselves.
Stellantis is just one big first cousin orgy.
That would probably be more profitable.
And we all know how inbreeding affects the bloodline!
They need to move the HQ to Alabama already.
How to troll Chrysler execs…hang on, lemme see if I can find an Aspen or Volare. Or a 504. A Gremlin? Nash Metropolitan? A 1920s car everyone will think is a Ford or Duesenberg if they don’t read the badge?
Got it. TC by Maserati. Cover two at once! And it’s a failure! Win-win!
I think that is actually a triple bonus point score, two brands, one HUGE failure.
A ’20s or ’30s Chrysler Imperial (a legit Cadillac competitor in the days when Cadillac was someone you’d really want to emulate) might be seen as either a motivator or as a mockery of current efforts
> it’s a failure
That doesn’t count.
Bantam but I wouldn’t fit in it.
What’s the best technically-Stellantis product to drive to Stellantis HQ?
I would pick a Chrysler TC by Maserati. I think all of us would immediately recognize this as a Stellantis product, but I could see a clueless rent-a-cop ticketing it despite representing not one but two current Stellantis brands.
“hmmm…. Chryslerati? Never heard of it.”
ticket.
Really, just drive any Dodge or Chrysler, those brands barely exist these days
That guy should be rewarded for possibly having the only Eagle Talon left in Michigan that is both still working and at least rust free enough to make the trip to work and back. They were really cool cars but I doubt I’ve seen more than 2 on the road in the last 10 years.
To be fair, we don’t know if they made the trip back home
I have a friend who bought one new, in Maine, circa 1998, and still has it. She loves it so much she spent a BUNCH of money having the body restored a few years ago. I admire the dedication, if not the car. I think hers might be a Plymouth Talon though.
Plymouth *Laser*… even as a kid I found it kinda bonkers you could by the same car under three different brands/models and somehow this made economic sense. Heck, it probably didn’t, but I still get a kick out of all the DSM shenanigans.
That’s right! But that made more sense to me than having the Neon be both a Plymouth and a Dodge, thinking about it.
What was the Dodge version of this? Completely escaping me.
There wasn’t one. Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser and Mitsubishi Eclipse.
There was a Talon near my work that sat in the same front yard for ~10 years slowly rotting into the ground. Local facebook group was the busiest its been in years the day it was removed.
Oh yeah – that always seemed odd given even back then Dodge was at least a bit more of a “performance” brand than Plymouth.
Probably one of the many guys like me who take their fun car out of the garage on a decent day, but otherwise stays in the garage during the winter.
So could I park my Buick Regal TourX, which was made in by Opel in Germany?
Good one, how about an old Saturn Aura?
Aura is far more US GM than Opel. A Sky or 2nd gen VUE had direct Opel badged versions though. (or an Astra obviously)
I don’t know where an 88-93 LeMans would fall though…Daewoo built but Opel design.
Better still – a Cadillac Catera, which was a rebadged Opel Omega/Senator, built on the same line in Germany. Really blow their minds by putting Vauxhall Omega badges on the thing, though I assume all the Vauxhalls were RHD.
Stellantis history makes how Audi came to be seem straightforward.
It was sold as an Opel, so that’s good enough for me.
I was originally thinking of the Saturn Astra, where they didn’t even bother changing the model name. Either would work since we’re dealing with the most pedantic of things here!
I was thinking similarly. I used to have a Saturn Astra that I rebadged as an Opel Astra. Would that be allowed in their lot?
I’m told that at the GM plants a vibe or prism gets the same side-eyes as a matrix or corolla. Like, no one cares enough anymore, but they know noting on it was built there.
A ’88 Chrysler Conquest with all the badging stickers peeled off would be effectively indestinguishable from the Mitsubishi Starion it really is.
Even better: the Mitsubishi (galant?) Based Challenger.
And Colt Vista, and probably a couple more I am forgetting, which was also sold as a Dodge. Pretty sure those were all built in Japan though, so maybe a harder sell than all the Mitsubishi/Chryslers that were jointly built in Normal, IL.
Dodge Colt Turbo a EV twin stick. Those were a hoot to hoon.
Fun even without the turbo – I drove one once.
I owned one once. Sideways hoonage in shopping mall parking lots on snowy Saskatchewan winter evenings. Perfect practice environment for rally driving.
That is also the best gen Dodge Challenger 🙂
I’m sure there was commentary back then, about how Ford could have sourced some of that aluminum out of Canada – where much of that aluminum would be processed using hydro-electric power under a free-trade agreement literally signed by the sitting president.
You know, from a country which, prior to last year, was happy to support its neighbor tariff free, with a power supply that’s largely insulated from drastic swings in oil prices, with a scale that’s able to handle surges in demand, and willing to buy a considerable number of those finished F150s back into their country.
Oh, you mean the neighbor that was happy to sell us all the oil we wanted right through a convenient, secure pipeline that doesn’t require maritime transportation from the other side of the globe, except we recently told them that we don’t need any of their oil because we have some at home?
Who needs a secure pipeline when we have the shooting gallery known as the Strait of Hormuz? To paraphrase the orange one, those tankers need to stop being pu$$ies and run the gauntlet! Oil tankers are great at dodging missiles.
Yeah, if there’s one thing everybody knows about oil tankers is that they’re both fast and maneuverable, make the SS United States look like a peddle boat
What’s that line from Pretty Woman about the Lotus?
“Corners like it’s
on railsan oil tanker”To be fair, I don’t think too many ships would fare well against a guided missile. But yeah, an oil tanker will be extra destroyed.
Actually Biden stopped the Keystone pipeline on his first day in office so a secure pipeline doesn’t actually exist.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/tc-energy-terminates-keystone-xl-pipeline-project.html
That’s the Keystone XL extension to the existing Keystone pipeline system, which already feeds Albertan oil to a number of US states
Was XL the one that was going to zig zag in the Dakotas to avoid predominately white cities but run right through an Indian reservation?
I believe it was pretty much a straight shot from the existing pipeline junction at Steele City, Nebraska up to the Canadian border
That is the one.
Instead of following the existing route of the finished Keystone pipeline TransCanada wanted to have the US government use eminent domain to seize land from tribes and farmers that didn’t want to sell so they could use new shorter route and save money.
For a pipeline that would mostly be used to export Canadian oil abroad instead of being used in the USA.
Enbridge would probably disagree with about 1.4M bpd going to the mid-west through the mainline, and various tie-ins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge_Pipeline_System
In particular, oil that is optimal for refineries requiring heavy oil to operate.
We don’t need no maritime transportation. The USA is the world’s #1 oil producer (Saudi Arabia and Russia are only runners-up).
IIRC – this aluminium plant actually is up in Quebec.
No, per original article:
“ aluminum plant in Oswego, New York”
Would a VW Routan be allowed?
The STLA story reminds me of when my company announced that the security guards would be making sure the “Expectant Mother” parking spots were not misused. It took about 5 seconds of security guards creepily staring at women’s midsections before that asinine idea was scrapped.
Ok, I know I usually come here to make jokes, but as someone who does PR for a living, I think we need to cut Stellantis some slack here.
First of all, on the surface the policy sounds dumb, but it really isn’t. They don’t want competitor’s cars in the most visible spaces. Do you have any idea what kind of pure gold it would be if Elon got himself a picture of a Cybertruck parked near Stellantis signage, driven by a Stellantis employee? I’d like to think GM and Ford aren’t as petty, but they can’t stop the fandom from blowing up social media with pics of a Raptor being driven to work by a RAM engineer.
If I read this right, competitive vehicles can be driven to work, just not parked in the closest spaces where these photo ops could happen.
As for the Eagle, in their response they were pretty transparent about it being an error and that there’s a process to get the error corrected. Should the security team have known? Maybe, but we can’t count on them being as attuned to former Chrysler brands as people like, well, us. I know I’m not interested in working security at a Stellantis plant, so I think that narrows the people of people willing to take the job.
I think this was just an unfortunate mix-up that is now getting some bad press on a policy, that is actually kind of reasonable. In a perfect world nobody would care if you drove a Mercury Cougar to your Stellantis job. This ain’t a perfect world. If the policy needs some adjustment, maybe they should exclude obscure vehicles and stick to existing, active competitors.
I think I might agree if Stellantis made any vehicles I was interested in driving.
C’mon, not even a Maserati?
Especially not a Maserati. I don’t own any gold chains or open front shirts, even if I absolutely do have the chest rug for it. Those cars are universally driven by a certain stereotype, at least in my neck of the woods.
It is a dumb policy – you don’t see Honda freaking out when people drive Explorers to work. I was recently by Ford HQ and they had all manner of vehicles parked throughout their lots – I’m assuming a lot of them are there for comparison testing or are being driven by engineers or whatever. My point is that the general public doesn’t even notice or care what’s parked in these lots.
John DeLorean used to drive Italian sports cars pretty much exclusively during his time at GM, don’t think anyone was going to tell him he couldn’t park where he damn well wanted
Being at a few of these factories myself, there’re large swathes of cars in Michigan held together with duct tape, bailer twine, and structural rust.
These are, very often, the very vehicles that are driving the Stellantis/GM/Ford hourly employee to work every day – and these are the cars they’re parking right next to that Stellantis sign.
I feel like a well rotted-out white-fade-to-crusty-rust-Ram is more on-brand of what I’d expect to see on the other side of a gated lot.
The UAW enforces this at plants more than anything.
Cool, logical, and reasonable.
Nice!
I mostly agree with you, but it sure is fun to read about them ticketing their own (historic) brand.
I knew this would set off a storm of comments, and I stand by my position here, but I do want to acknowledge a few of the valid counterpoints.
While I don’t know the real motivations, the policy feels like it’s based on insecurity: the only way we can get our employees to buy our cars is if we make them. I don’t know what the Honda lot looks like but dang what a statement if it was filled with Hondas without needing an incentive.
Nothing? But they make so may different cars!
How about a Peugeot 208? I’ve not driven one, but I used to own a 206 and that was a good small car (very French)*. Or a Citroen ami ‘Darkside’? The Opel Astra Sport Tourer looks pretty cool (and Stellantis clearly just copy/pasted their website design across all their brands).
I’ll admit there’s a lot of boring looking crossover things, but they still sell a few interesting vehicles, just not in the USA. I’ve not even mentioned the vans.
*(If you go on peugeot.co.uk, and click on ‘Cars’, next to the 5008 SUV they also list their Hypercar 9X8, Cheeky Peugeot 😉
GM scrapped the policy at the tech center during covid as having all parking lots at 5% utilization made no sense at all.
They haven’t brought the policy back except for EVs chargers, which are only for GM vehicles.
The Chrysler headquarters considers all but the most inconvenient 15% or so as “preferred” parking.
I don’t think Elon would do that for the simple reason Stellantis would troll them with a picture of a RAM parked at a gigafactory. If they all gave up this policy, MAD would keep the peace.
Personally, I think the rule is dumb, but I can understand why they enforce it.
Also, Stellantis has a very good employee lease program, not just “employee pricing” that saves you a couple grand off MSRP like GM & Ford. It would be silly to work there and NOT take advantage of it.
So Stellantis at this point only exists so its employees can have something to drive to work, right?
That would explain the absenteeism. “Sorry I’m late. I broke down again.”
“What’s the best technically-Stellantis product to drive to Stellantis HQ?”
The AMX or maybe a Levi’s Edition Gremlin.
Also, Country Music just sucks.
I’m listening to the new Megadeth CD as I type this. -Tipping Point to be specific.
It’s dumb that a random private company hired by a corporation can give you a parking ticket on private property anyway.
Like what do they do if they don’t pay? Garnish your wages? Absurd.
It’s the almost-equivalent of being ticketed for parking in the wrong lot at a university you’re going into debt for the privilege of attending.
Universities will absolutely, 10000% turn you over to collections and trash your credit score if you don’t pay their extortion. BT, almost DT when I got a ticket at a big U. despite parking where the IT staff I was working with told me to, and they took the ticket and said “we will take care of this”. Thankfully, my company just paid it – and it was $200+ once the rental agency added their extortion to it for bothering to pass it along to me, eventually. Better that than to start getting collection calls though.
Plus the biggest cudgel of all if you are a student – withhold your diploma if you owe them a single cent.
I’ve had them do that to me. I was already signing up for $25k a year in student loans, and on top of that, they wanted $150 per semester for a pass to park in a commuter lot. Ended up being cheaper to just pay a ticket every so often, but I do have a couple that I just never paid. One was sent to collections and the other they apparently just dropped. IDC. They’re not getting another cent from me.
I suspect they have found that parking ticket revenue is a nice earner for them. Most big universities I deal with are pretty Nazi-like about it. They want the money. Outsourcing parking enforcement to private companies of course incentivizes it even more. Zero-effort revenue stream.
If you end up with enough parking tickets against you, your employer can take action assuming it’s in the contract. The security contractor’s only doing the bidding of its employer.
I used to accumulate one/week for a while – I’d pull into my spot between an air handler and another part of the building (we parked on the roof), parked close at an angle so I could enjoy the shade in the afternoon. It was in the back 40 so there was no one else around.
First they started complaining because I wasn’t parallel between the lines, so I started straightening up and backing in. Then I was “compromising the structural integrity of the building”. I continued to give no fucks, and only stopped when the facility engineer complained to my boss.
How about a ridiculously Art Deco Graham “Spirit of Motion”?
Graham-Paige sold what was left of their automotive division to Kaiser-Frazer, Kaiser-Fraser became Kaiser Motors, which became Willys Motors, Willys Motors became Kaiser-Jeep, which was bought by American Motors, which was bought by Chrysler. Transitive property, is Graham part of the Stellantis legacy now? I think it is.
Ooo… make mine the Graham Hollywood, built with the Cord 810 body stampings. I’ll look fabulous while I’m being towed!
A Lamborghini LM002.
Better yet, an M1 Abrams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams
If you’re not showing up for work in Francisco Scaramanga’s Matador coupe, are you really showing up?
If Stellantis/FCA would enforce the trademark on it, you get to park it in the employee lot.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/matchbox/images/8/88/Eaglebottom.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230205225940
I’d take a Sunbeam Alpine to work.
Some Chrysler employee should drive a 1910 Maxwell to work and park in the closer spaces just to see what they’d do
How much do you think a Jack Benny impersonator would charge? Could be a lower price tier one that’s allowed to hit people
I doubt anyone younger than 70 will even get the reference
53, but my wife and I like listening to old Jack Benny radio shows on long drives.
56, and I’m here for the Jack Benny Maxwell. Bring Rochester along while you’re at it.
Just maybe leave the violin at home, Stellantis has enough problems already