00:00Joining us out of Detroit is Bloomberg's autos reporter Gabriella Coppola. She was at the company's capital markets event yesterday.
00:07Gabby I was so bummed to miss this last time I went to one. It was FCA and I was
00:13interviewing Sergio Marchionne about why they couldn't put a stick shift in in the 4C. In any case what do
00:22we know and by the way that was now for Romeo. Let me start out with that because that's for
00:26car lovers such an important brand.
00:29What's going to happen with Alfa Romeo? Well they are talking about putting out some new models. I think the
00:39big strategy yesterday was that they are going to focus their investment on four key brands. Jeep, Ram, Peugeot and
00:46Fiat. But then they're going to kind of try to leverage those investments to feed their other smaller brands that
00:54are more regional that don't have as much scale and Alfa would be one of them.
00:58So they are going to put out some new product but it's kind of I think it kind of remains
01:05to be seen how different this is from the previous plans because they've always I mean Solantis has 14 brands
01:13and the thing that Wall Street is pressuring them about is why don't you just kill off some of these
01:17brands but they don't want to because people love them like people love it but they just you know they
01:21got to work within their means here.
01:23And they have to sell obviously less expensive cars right. I was just as we saw driving the Alfa Romeo
01:29Tonali but I've driven a lot of their cars with price tags.
01:33For example the Grand Wagoneer that stretch way over $100,000 and right now you know inflation hitting Americans hard
01:41that they can't afford to buy new cars.
01:43What's with the lower priced offerings coming out of brands like Chrysler?
01:48Yeah so even that $100,000 Wagoneer has been repositioned to be more affordable and I think you've seen that
01:55across the portfolio definitely with Jeep with Ram and now with Chrysler bringing back Chrysler.
02:02And this is a huge deal because as long as I've been covering the auto industry which is almost a
02:07decade people have been talking about new product for Chrysler and we never saw it you know.
02:12So they're going to bring back two models that are going to be under $30,000.
02:17They're going to be it's like the Chrysler Aero and the Aero Cross and then there's going to be a
02:21step up from that called the Chrysler Airflow.
02:23And they're positioning this as you know they say none of the Detroit automakers are really in this space.
02:29It's kind of dominated by you know Asian automakers Hyundai Toyota Honda.
02:33They're going to try to use Chrysler to get back in there and kind of recapture that entry-level buyer
02:37that they lost in recent years because they did focus so much on the upscale premium you know tricked out
02:44Jeeps the highest trim you know Wrangler Wagoneer Grand Wagoneer.
02:50They're very you know luxury pickup trucks trucks can be a luxury car so I think they are recalibrating to
02:57adjust to the kind of affordability crisis that we are having in the U.S. car market right now.
03:02Yeah absolutely I mean I've spent time recently in the Ram RHO which is incredibly luxurious and that is a
03:08pickup truck the TRX obviously the dream with the Hemi Chrysler made the Hemi famous back in the day but
03:14everybody associates it now with Dodge and they're bringing that back.
03:18What do we know about the new product offerings from Dodge?
03:22Oh my gosh there's so much Matt there's a lot.
03:25So first of all on the affordability theme okay well actually let me be careful there because I was starting
03:30to talk about Ram but let me talk about Dodge.
03:32So with Dodge I think the most exciting thing we saw was there's going to be a new sports car
03:36called the Copperhead.
03:38We just got a sneak peek of it yesterday at the Auburn Hills at the company's kind of sprawling campus
03:44outside Detroit.
03:45It is a sexy curvaceous people might compare it to the Viper but CEO Antonio Filosa said this is not
03:51the Viper but it's different but I think it's going to be something more accessible.
03:55It's going to be more again with this issue of affordability you know they've brought back the ICE version after
04:01killing kind of disastrously killing the combustion engine you know putting a stake in the heart of the things that
04:07you love Matt under the previous CEO.
04:10They phased out ICE muscle cars now they're bringing those back but I want to mention also the big news
04:17here is how much they're expanding the Ram lineup.
04:19There's going to be a Ram SUV which we haven't had for over three decades called the Ram Charger and
04:26there's going to be a midsize and a compact pickup truck the Dakota Ram Dakota that's a midsize and they're
04:33going to bring the Rampage which is a compact pickup.
04:36So again making cars smaller to get people into things that they can afford but they can still make a
04:42decent margin that's the plan.
04:43I think I agree with you the Ram Charger is the most important news from all of their what would
04:49you say 13 14 brands because all the other American brands GM as well as Ford have you know a
04:58three row body on frame SUV and Ram hasn't had one for so many years.
05:05So okay Gabby we'll have to talk about this offline my producer saying that's enough of a car.
05:09That's enough car.
05:10Okay.
05:11Thank you Matt.
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