It’s fair to say that Chrysler has definitely seen better days, as its current lineup consists of the aging 300, the value-focused Voyager and the recently facelifted Pacifica.
While there has been speculation that, following the PSA-FCA merger, the brand could be dropped, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares attempted to squash those rumors by calling Chrysler a “pillar” of the company.
Little is known about Chrysler’s future at this point, as The Detroit News is reporting Tavares said the company needs a few more months to determine the brand’s “vision destination.” However, Tavares stated that Chrysler used to be the expression of “automotive American technology” and suggested they could work on that by “using other ideas like autonomous vehicles, zero-emission vehicles [or] highly connected vehicles.”
Also Read: Merger With FCA Has Peugeot Reconsidering U.S. Market Return
While Chrysler’s future is still unclear, it’s starting to look less bleak. The same can’t be said about plans to bring Peugeot to the United States. According to Car & Driver, Tavares noted that “I think it’s better that we funnel the talent, the capital, and the engineering capability… to the existing brands to improve what needs to be improved and to accelerate where we need to accelerate, because we already have a very strong presence in this market.”
In essence, it’s a lot easier to rebuild Chrysler than trying to start from scratch with Peugeot. That’s probably a wise idea as the French automaker pulled out of the U.S. market in 1991 and it would take a lot of money and effort to bring them back.
While a lot of questions remain, it sounds like we’ll learn more about Chrysler’s future later this year.
