FCA’s Quality Is Not Improving, Despite Leadership Changes

In terms of quality, annual surveys say that Fiat Chrysler hasn’t been doing very well lately, and continuously replacing heads of departments doesn’t help either.

Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat and RAM landed at the bottom of this year’s Consumer Report’s survey, occupying the last four spots. 2015 wasn’t too kind either, and FCA tried to fix the problem by changing its execs in charge of quality.

All in vain, because the last three (Betts, Liddane and Garberding) failed to turn around the company, despite being competent individuals, which could indicate that the real problems comes from elsewhere.

According to Autonews, in annual surveys, suppliers criticized FCA for a number of reasons, including making costly, last minute changes to various products, delaying design decisions, and even trying to reduce costs from its supply network.

As you’d imagine, these “practices” weren’t on the suppliers’ liking, so they allegedly began cutting corners in order to stay profitable. Moreover, FCA’s tendency of rushing vehicles to market didn’t help either, as some of the finished products were usually rough around the edges (to put it mildly). Maybe that’s the reason why automobiles like the Dodge Dart and the Chrysler 200 were cut short.

Sure, Consumer Report’s surveys aren’t the absolute representative of actual quality issues, but it just shows how FCA is being perceived these days.