----- Forwarded by Calvin R Thudium/CARZ/DCC/DCX on 04/20/2010 02:49 PM -----
| "Gord Gray" <ggray@local444.caw.ca> 04/20/2010 08:33 AM |
|
Windsor's Chris Vander Doelen: Fiat plots Chrysler's future
Marchionne to deliver strategic plan, new product decisions Wednesday
By Chris Vander Doelen, The Windsor Star April 20, 2010 8:42 AM
In this file photo, Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne gives members of the media a tour of the Chrysler and fiat display Monday morning at the first ay of the North American Internation Auto show.
Photograph by: Dan Janisse, The Windsor Star
Wednesday is the long-awaited day of reckoning for Canadian Chrysler workers and suppliers -- the day we find out what new role has been chosen for them by their new Italian masters.
Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne will deliver his latest strategic plan during another of his trademark, all-day briefings in Turin. This time it's for Fiat.
Every surviving Chrysler plant in North America is expected to get new product as Marchionne lays out what will be built where for the next five years. The futures of WAP and BAP, as Chrysler employees call Windsor Assembly and Brampton Assembly, are almost completely in Marchionne's hands.
Knowledgeable observers always say they are more nervous about Brampton's future than Windsor's because Marchionne often refers in semi-glowing terms to WAP.
But tomorrow Fiat is expected to announce that BAP will assemble a new Alfa Romeo product based on the Chrysler 300 chassis. Production is at least 12 months away, local sources tell me, because no tooling has been tendered yet.
And then we find out whether Windsor remains a one-product minivan plant with a rapidly approaching Best Before Date -- or whether it gets to build something completely different.
The betting money says WAP will be assigned a combination of those two potential outcomes. Windsor will continue to build minivans on three shifts per day, despite a market segment that is now disappearing at a frightening rate.
But WAP will also start building two new vehicles which may be publicly identified for the first time Wednesday.
Sources (outside the company) suggest that one of the vehicles is almost certainly a light duty "lifestyle" pickup truck to replace the current Dodge Dakota.
U.S. online sources say it will probably resemble the Dodge Rampage concept shown in 2006. It will offer a marked improvement in fuel economy over the outgoing Dakota, a notorious gas pig.
Plans call for it to be built on a modified minivan platform -- which would make it only the second pickup truck on the market in North America without a true frame, the other being the Honda Ridgeline.
Allpar.com, an all-Chrysler nerd site, reported the Dakota rumour last month. Engineers who have talked to Chrysler about the new WAP programs tell me two new body codes are definitely slated to be built in Windsor -- and both of them may be trucks.
One of the programs has the body code BU, which is a carry-over platform but a completely new program. Hiring was taking place a month ago for both programs, which means they are either closely linked or on similar platforms.
Fiat intends to expand the RAM brand. But it also says any new commercial van it builds will be Fiat-based.
Based on that, they could build a new Fiat-based commercial cargo van in Windsor badged as a RAM, or a minivan-based RAM. The plant can do it -- it's capable of building up to five versions of two different platforms.
The Volkswagen Routan is toast, local business sources say, and won't be produced in Windsor for much longer.
Whatever Marchionne announces is going to be exceptionally welcome news for Windsor's biggest auto employer. More than a few staff have long prayed for an escape from the minivan prison they've been locked into for more than a quarter of a century.
It's been a golden prison for most of those years.
But the bottom dropped out of the minivan segment a decade ago and there's been no end in sight.
"It's been dropping like a lead balloon and there's no telling where it will stop," says business professor and industry expert Tony Faria, co-chair of the University of Windsor's automotive research group.
Minivan sales peaked at 1.5 million in 2000, when Chrysler built almost half of them. But sales slid to one million total minivans in 2007 and have plunged by another 450,000 in the last three years alone, he says.
"With the way sales are trending this year we're looking at a minivan segment in North America of less than 500,000 -- less than a third of what it was 10 years ago," Faria said Monday. "So anything they bring here would be really good news."
We know one thing: Fiat didn't reverse its decision to kill WAP's third shift last fall to build more minivans. So good news for Windsor is guaranteed.
cvanderdoelen@thestar.canwest.com or 519-255-6852
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
| | Gord Gray Local 444 Public Relations / Communications Managing Editor of The Guardian of Windsor Inc. & 444 News 1855 Turner Road, Windsor, Ontario, N8W 3K2 Phone : 519-258-6400 (Ext. 427) Fax: (519) 258-0424 ggray@local444.caw.ca |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.