In case you missed it, FCA and PSA made their marriage official recently in an even-steven partnership. The merger is called ‘Stellantis’ and is now the world’s fourth-largest automaker, sitting behind Toyota, Volkswagen, and Renault-Mitsubishi-Nissan. Both the groups have many marquees under their respective umbrellas, but Stellantis won’t be operating all of them. While there were rumors of which brands would make the cut and which ones would be knocked off, there was nothing concrete so far.
But, Stellantis’ has now dropped the first bomb saying the Street and Racing Technology (SRT) division is getting chopped off, On the bright side, however, the engineers working for the performance division will be integrated into the “company’s global engineering organization”, which means many brands under Stellantis could be SRT-ified!
This report comes from a Stellantis spokesperson who spoke to MoparInsiders. She said, “All of the core elements of the SRT performance engineering team have been integrated into our company’s global engineering organization. This action will have the two-way benefit of ensuring that our brands’ SRT and performance-focused product offerings continue to meet the highest quality standards and expectations while delivering key learnings from motorsports and other high-performance-technology applications across a wider mix of our company’s product lines."
Even though the death of SRT may not sit well with enthusiasts, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. The spokesperson explained that the brand is being diluted within the new portfolio, but Jeep, Dodge, and Ram vehicles will still come with SRT-branded trims. The SRT team might have been disbanded, but the engineers from the team will now be mixed with the PSA brands so Stellantis can work on performance projects across the range.
Back in the fourth quarter of 2019, the FCA and PSA merger was officially announced. It would be a 50:50 stake with the shareholders getting 50 percent of the equity from each brand. In July last year, PSA’s CEO, Carlos Tavares, was given the reigns to head the merger for the first five years and the name ‘Stellantis’ was revealed, and a few months post this, the logo was revealed, too.
In total, Stellantis now has 14 brands under its umbrella, eight from FCA and five from PSA, along with Mopar. These include:
-* Abarth
-* Alfa Romeo
-* Chrysler
-* Dodge
-* Fiat
-* Jeep
-* Lancia
-* Maserati
-* Ram
-* Citroën
-* DS
-* Opel
-* Peugeot
-* Vauxhall
There were rumors of the Chrysler brand going extinct, but Stellantis’s CEO, Carlos Tavares, confirmed that the brand is here to stay and will receive the U.S. market’s attention instead of the Peugeot brand being brought over. So, that keeps the 14-brand group tight as of now, but there could be spurts of surprises here and there until the newly-formed group settles well in the market.