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
“… and one of the major plants that provides aluminum for Ford caught on fire last year. Then it caught on fire again.”
Get back to me after it catches fire, falls over, and sinks into a swamp. The fourth time it will be fine.
https://youtu.be/aNaXdLWt17A?si=eZ3ztmvkvIoZpoXu
Python is always the answer.
Stellantis is a company that is somehow LESS than the sum of its parts.
And that’s saying something, considering its parts are a dog’s breakfast of the worst brands in the world.
Nice to know the USPS has already been given the timeline for how long fuel is going to cost more.
Trolling for Exhaust Leaks content, eh? If anything, she’ll probably be pissed that you misspelled her name. 😛
I would roll into the Dead Brands R Us parking lot in an early ’70s Mitsu/Dodge Colt with a “Yes It’s Got A Hemi In It” wrap.
A ’78 Dodge Challenger would be even better…
Yeah, the best generation Dodge Challenger 🙂
I vote for a Plymouth Colt. I’ll make the bold claim some of these plant employees don’t know what a Plymouth is/was….
Or a Plymouth Cricket… if there are any left.
It’s just a slightly stupider not petty version of ticketing Teslas in the American car lots.
The eagle talon is a fine choice but my mind went to eagle summit. Hudson hornet could also be a fun one. Or an amx.
Plymouth Voyager would be interesting to see what they would do.
Stellantis is like an automotive corporation Voltron that when brought together results in only a half of a robotic toe.
“A Stellantis spokeswoman said preferred parking is reserved for company-branded vehicles”
And by ticketing an Eagle Talon, it reinforces my belief that the Europeans in charge don’t know shit about the North American operation, the heritage of any of the brands or the company history.
“What’s the best technically-Stellantis product to drive to Stellantis HQ?”
VW Routan.
I’ll throw in a Mitsubishi Raider to the mix. Made in Warren with union labor, Powertech engine made in Trenton, Transmission made in Kokomo, you can’t really get more legacy Chrysler than that!
Some of the Ford plants had the same policy, which never mattered to me and my Fiesta most of the time, but i did get a very cool picture of my classic 911 in front of Ford World Headquarters.
What am i driving to the Stellantis plant? honestly the Eagle Talon is a pretty damn good choice.
My dad worked at the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois for 30 years.
If you drove a current model of what was produced there, you got to park in the closest section.
If you drove an older vehicle that was made there, you were in the next section out.
If you drove any Chrysler product, you parked in the next section out.
If you drove a F*rd or GM product, (or AMC, before Chrysler bought them) you were in the next section out.
If you drove a Japanese vehicle like a Toyota, Datsun, or Honda, you had to park across the other side of the railroad tracks. and walk what seemed like a mile just to get inside the plant.
Also, back then, no ‘foreign cars’ were allowed in the parking lots for the UAW union meetings.
What if you rode a bicycle… electrified or otherwise?
That Belvidere Plant was kind of out in the middle of nowhere back then. It was right along the Tollway, but it didn’t have its own exit.
I think the only people who rode a bike there did it because they lost their license due to a DWI.
And they didn’t have electrified bikes back then. The closest thing was a MoPed, and nobody wanted to be seen on one of those.
Win with a Schwinn.
Mopeds fkn rule. I miss mine.
Had to be made in merca. None of that furrn’ junk!
When I had to work at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant, they had different colored parking spots. 1 for UAW cars, 1 for “foreign” cars. I drove a Mazda6 that was built at the Ford Flat Rock Plant, but I never took a chance that the people driving around inspecting would know that, so I always parked in the back and just took the exercise.
On a smaller level, I used to work for a tobacco company, and they actually spelled out in the handbook that employees who smoked should not be seen purchasing or smoking competing cigarette brands during business hours.
We also weren’t allowed to be inside a customer’s building at the same time as any representative from a competing company. But that was more for legal reasons
One of my classmates in engineering school got a job with Philip Morris, (which has some of the most high volume manufacturing you can imagine- so some good engineering challenges) and she mentioned that in the lobby there was a huge bowl with mini-packs of cigarettes and a sign that said “please smoke”. She also said one of the tobacco storage lockers was overwhelmed when you opened the door and made her want to quit smoking (she was a casual smoker – less than 10 sticks a week). Good times.
This was one of PM’s smaller competitors, but I can tell you that at sales meetings and conferences, there was usually a bowl of cigarette packs in the middle of the conference table or a selection of cigars on a side table (inexpensive machine made cigars that people mostly buy to unroll and then reroll with a filler of their choice, if you know what I mean), but, still. The break rooms and lobby areas still had ashtrays mounted on the walls, like hospitals did in the 1980s, and, frankly, all the furniture, office fixtures, and carpeting in every location I went into all seemed to be no newer than the 1970s, at most.
The Stellantis policy (and dogfooding policies in general) don’t bother me as long as the penalties aren’t too severe. The WSJ article makes clear these tickets generally don’t carry fines, although repeat offenders may get a boot, which requires a note from their boss to remove (lol). The worst thing that happens if you comply with the policy and drive a non-Stellantis vehicle is that you have a longer walk.
As a counterpoint to the competitive intelligence thing – often a company’s best source of feedback is their own employees. If management is smart enough to listen to them, this sort of dog fooding can result in major improvements.
The right thing to do here is have fun with it – $10 fines that go into a party or sunshine fund.
LOL you think any American car company’s management is smart enough to listen their employees?
Jim Farley literally has Toyota on his resume, but he learned NOTHING from them 🙁
No. But that also applies to the thought that they’d listen to their employees about vehicles from other manufacturers.
Here’s what you do. Remember how people were rebadging their Teslas out of shame? You get a 3D printer and make new badges for a Model Y that read “STELLANTIS”, apply them to the back, and make the parking lot monitors’ heads explode.
Dodge Attitude second gen (Hyundai Accent, they even kept the Hyundai badge but added Dodge to it), or even better, the third gen one that is basically a Mitsubishi Mirage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Attitude
I’d rock a Dodge Raider!
The Dodge Atos is old enough to bring up here! That’s what they did before the Attitude 😛
Atos was much smaller. The one before the Attitude was called Verna.
Yeah, but I’ve always liked the Atos more than I should, and Hyundai should’ve sold it up here.
USPS fuel surcharge. how about moving the fleet to electric like it was originally intended.
Sorry, can’t do that. It wouldn’t have put money in the right pockets.
Eh, 8%, I know trucking companies that are already at 40%
I actually can’t wait to see when it happens locally for me, for when they do go electric. My local USPS is located directly in downtown, surrounded too closely by a VFW, a side street with direct college kid access, and the local YWCA right behind it.
I was told by one of the drivers that ours was supposed to go 100% electric, but because of the property, they cannot. They’d have to buy a new property to do so, and yeah, I doubt the federal government would love to put money into a random dumpy town in NY to build a new location solely for EV’s. They weren’t even considering that under Biden.
Oh Lord. Do you know how sick I am of that song? I have a friend who’s addicted to it and he’s sent it to me about 15 times. I’m not exaggerating.
I can’t believe some idiot didn’t know what an Eagle is. Stupid kid. Also, real Americans drive what they want.
I’d drive a Peugeot 504 there and park it front and center. Or a Citroen SM.
I find it amusing the 4/5ths of my little fleet would be eligible to park at BMW if they do this nonsense, as BMW flat out owns the Triumph (automobiles, not motorcycles) brand, and my Disco I was built just after BMW bought Rover Group. The Disco I has amusing Honda influences in it from Rover’s previous tie-up with them.
I brazenly park in spots at work marked reserved for things like “Administration” and “College President” even though I am neither of those things. I also declined to purchase a parking permit this year because I’m tired of parking lot maintenance or whatever being charged to employees. I figured they would need to give me like 15 tickets before the cost surpasses that of a permit. So far so good. I’ve received one warning and zero tickets in the last year. I only wish I had an Eagle Talon to park “illegally” at work.
I joined a nearly defunct club just to get elected as their representative to the student senate, since that came with a special parking area right in the middle of campus
I like the Eagle Vision, myself. Give me all of the rebadged Dodge Intrepids. Cab forward design and all.
Our UPS program updates multiple times per week for fuel surcharges, every time gas even looks like it’s going up a penny. But never comes back down when the price drops again.
Some of our vendors still have the ‘fuel surcharge’ added back during the 2008-ish(?) era.
If a company is dumb enough to be shitheads to its workers based on what kind of car they drive, they’re gonna get any of my business.
Not like I was considering any Stellantis products of course, but still.
typo? they’re gonna get or they’re not gonna get
not. missed the edit window.
In the factories that I’ve worked in or visited these rules come from the UAW not management.
Can’t say for sure, but since AMC bought out Kaiser to get Jeep, I’m pretty sure Stellantis owns the Kaiser brand. I’d show up in a Kaiser-Frazer and see what happens.
Perhaps not a vehicle per se, but I would park Big Red at the Stellantis HQ. Or maybe an Overland produced by Willys.
And trigger Big Red at random times.
I looked at a satellite view of the Stellantis lot to compare oil stains with the other lots. It’s inconclusive, because there’s so many more cars in the far lots
Yeah most of the “Brand Only” lots are covered or straight up garages. So the employees and contractors that drive the right vehicles get to park out of the elements, and close to the doors. I can personally attest that walking from the competitor lots (aside from the north parking deck, which has roof parking available) is ten to 15 minutes just to get to the door of the tech center. That’s only the first half of the journey though, as none of you meetings will be anywhere near those doors needing another 10-15 minutes of walking inside the Tech Center to get where you are going, unless you’re visiting the science wing, which is all relatively close to the parking lot.
My buddy goes between two GM plants weekly. He parks his Rav in the foreign lot.
The irony isn’t even that there are more cars in the back lot than the closer lot. It’s that 3/4 of the spaces in the closer lot are empty all the time because of 25 years of cutbacks and layoffs.
Was Studebaker ever a part of any Stellantis products?
Hard to tell because Studebaker never quite ceased as a corporation. Some of its subsidiaries are still around today, such as Clarke Floor Machine and Onan. Onan is now part of Cummins.
Onan is part of Cummins? What a felicitous linguistic/business coincidence.
Not really, but they sold their military vehicle division (Studebaker General Products) to Kaiser-Jeep in the early ’60s, which later became part of American Motors General Products. But AMC no longer owned AM General by the time Chrysler bought them
TIL what palimpsest means. Thanks Autopian!