The new Dodge Charger will be showing up on the internet on Tuesday morning, and it’s a huge deal for Stellantis, which finds itself with far too many brands undergoing identity crises. Dodge is on the verge of becoming one of those brands, which is why there is simply no room for failure of the new Dodge Charger. It has to succeed, because it is the Dodge brand.
You may have read in the news last week that Stellantis killed off the “Wagoneer” brand, and will roll the models into the Jeep lineup. The Detroit News quoted Jeep Brand CEO Antonio Filosa and wrote about why Jeep is giving up on “Wagoneer”:
“We understood that the story about the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer was not a very fluent story. So we want to give more fluency to that,” said Filosa, on Friday from the Stellantis U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills.
[…]
Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer, which are assembled at Stellantis’ Warren Truck Assembly north of Detroit, were the company’s attempt at a premium and luxury sub-brand. On Friday, Filosa made clear that effort is dead and the two high-end SUVs will be “converging” into the Jeep brand, long considered one of the most valuable names in the automotive industry.
I get what Jeep was trying to do with the Wagoneer brand — basically offer a brand like Land Rover’s upscale “Range Rover” — but that Range Rover brand earned its reputation over decades, and it offered an SUV that was truly novel in its day. It was early to the luxo-SUV craze, and that made it a household name. Was creating a brand based on a 30 year-old name and two body-on-frame SUVs that are not that different than a Cadillac Escalade really going to work for Stellantis? Maybe over time, and with a few more models, it could have gained traction. Maybe.
Regardless, let’s forget about Wagoneer, as there’s more trouble in the Stellantis brand-verse. Look at Chrysler:
The brand offers one car.
Yes, the entire brand consists of a single vehicle in either gas or plug-in hybrid form. That’s it. Chrysler is the Pacifica.
Now let’s look at Ram’s lineup:
The offerings amount to, basically, just a couple of models. There are some pickup trucks (1500, 1500 Classic, and the heavy duty trucks) and there’s a van.
In my eyes, and in many folks’ eyes, the Ram brand is weak even 15 years after it spun off of Dodge back in 2009. Sure, the trucks still sell in huge numbers, but let’s be honest: Most folks are still calling these Dodge Rams.
That “Ram” is the brand name and the model is just a boring number shared with Chevy — “1500” or “2500” — is so absurdly silly that the general public hasn’t really gotten a grip on the whole naming convention. In fact, I recently saw a car journalist in the secret “Automotive Media Professionals” Facebook group write this post:
Really MotorTrend? Dodge?! It’s been Ram for more than a decade and yes the post they reference is the new 2025 Ram 1500 first drive. They have it right in the title within this newsletter.
This was in reference to Motor Trend’s newsletter, which apparently came out at about the same time as the new Ram 1500 reviews hit the web:
The journalist writing the post on the Facebook page seemed to think that Motor Trend was calling the Ram 1500 a Dodge. This led to a whole discussion among auto media professionals about the Ram brand. Here are a few quotes:
I always thought that the RAM brand name was a dumb idea. Like, why?
15 years after the creation of the Ram brand, literally everyone outside of automotive (and some in automotive) still call these trucks Dodge. They could change the name back to Dodge and no one would notice because they have been Dodges all along to every layperson. Even owners do, since they went to a dealer selling Dodges to get their Rams.
At cnet we would put Dodge in the url of Ram articles for SEO.It’s the least successful name change since Navistar
Clearly they didn’t learn a thing from 20+ years of Imperials not being Chrysler models. I still think it was foolish to spin off Ram. Combined Dodge+Ram sales for CY23 would have put it in the top 10. And it would have given Stellantis two brands in the top 10, something GM and Ford couldn’t claim.
I still call it a Dodge Ram when talking about the Chevy Silverado and Ford F-150. If I say F-150 and Silverado I never say Dodge. But if I’m using the brand and model then I pretty much always slip and say Dodge Ram.
Plus, let’s be real: it should still be the Dodge Ram.
But let’s fast forward to early 2024, and Dodge literally only has two cars in production:
1. Dodge Durango
For more than 100 years, the Dodge brand has carried on the spirit of brothers John and Horace Dodge. Their influence continues today as Dodge shifts into high gear with a lineup that delivers unrivaled performance in each of the segments where they compete.
Dodge drives forward as a pure performance brand, offering SRT Hellcat versions of the Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger and Dodge Durango, as well as an R/T performance hybrid version of the all-new Dodge Hornet, representing the brand’s first-ever electrified performance vehicle. Dodge delivers the drag-strip dominating 807-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Super Stock; the 797-horsepower Dodge Charger SRT Redeye, the most powerful and fastest mass-produced sedan in the world; and the 710-horsepower Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat, the most powerful SUV ever; and best-in-class standard performance in the compact utility vehicle segment with the Dodge Hornet. Combined, these four muscle vehicles make Dodge the industry’s most powerful brand, offering more horsepower than any other American brand across its entire lineup.
Dodge is in a bit of a pickle. The brand has built its name, in part, on raucously loud, powerful internal combustion engines, and now has to pivot to electric propulsion like the rest of the industry. Many of the brand’s customers are EV skeptics, believing that the only proper engine for a motor car is the V8. I don’t fault them for this; V8s are great. (And, to be fair, many people outside of Dodge’s customer base are are EV skeptics). But getting those skeptics onboard with Dodge’s new EV direction is going to be tricky, and it seems Dodge’s strategy is to acknowledge those customers’ skepticism, commiserate a bit, and then use that commiseration to build trust that gets customers to buy into electrification. At least, that’s what the strategy looks like to me based on this quote from Dodge’s CEO Tim Kuniskis, who showed off the new Daytona concept at the company’s annual drag race-filled event on Detroit’s fabled Woodward Avenue:““We didn’t ask for the rules to change. We didn’t want them to change, but they did. And we can try to outrun them, but that would be a nine second pass straight into extinction. Or we can do what we did: read their rules. Study their rules. Find their gray areas, then unleash the Banshee. Trust me, this is not the EV they want you to have. This is the way Dodge does EVs.”
We’ll have a better idea at 11 A.M. Eastern time on Tuesday, when every car site (including this one) out there publishes its “first look” at the new Charger.
Images: Stellantis
For decades, Chrysler struggled at the brink.
When Mercedes took over a dying Chrysler, it was the best shot in the arm the company ever got. It was their best hope for the future. One of the industry’s highest quality brands was going to inject their DNA into one of the lowest quality brands.
This brought about the revelation that is the LX platform.
It was Chryler’s greatest revival, and it ultimately failed.
After a bit of back and forth, Chrysler ended up in the hands of Fiat, a company remembered for being run out of America due to their reputation for poor quality.
I thought to myself that if Mercedes couldn’t fix Chrysler, there was no hope for Fiat.
The results were absolutely predictable.
Now here we are, with Chrysler having finally sqeezed all they could from that old Mercedes DNA.
What does Chysler need to do in order to exist in the coming decades? The answer is clear: They need to partner with a successful brand that builds high quality vehicles, and badge-engineer one of their old platforms.
Honda and Toyota have several platforms that are designed and built in America, and they have much more American content than many Chrysler products.
Just slap a Challenger body on top of a Lexus GS platform, and Lexus reliability becomes Dodge reliability.
Instead, they’ll try to reinvent the electric car, and possibly offer it with an option to have an EV or ICE powertrain.
I admire the idea from a marketing standpoint and I know how important it is to have brand identity, but it think this is the wrong idea at the wrong time.
Chrysler was NOT dying. It had been on an upswing since the introduction of the K-car. Remember “The New Dodge”? They were on a role and things were going great until the spineless bean counter (Bob Eaton) Lee Iacocca chose over a visionary car guy (Bob Lutz) as his successor wanted out and came up with some BS about the company “needing a partner to assist them in transitioning to the 21st century” and sold Chrysler out to Daimler while he got his golden parachute.
“Most folks are still calling these Dodge Rams.”
+1.
Making Ram its own brand was stupid and Ram should be folded back into Dodge.
Like Ford trying to change “Bronco” and “Mustang” from model names to brand names. Lame.
Ram is it’s own brand?
I literally didn’t know that.
Admittedly, I don’t follow trucks that much.
Lol
I only realized that myself a couple years ago.
Of course it can fail. It’s a fucking CHRYSLER product!
If the company fails, we just bail them out again,. Shitty Detroit behavior is always rewarded with bailout money 🙁
Practically anybody reading this can do a better job than Stellantis “executives” and “management” are doing LOL
Jon Lovitz is doing the best he can. We’ll sell more cars, yeah, that’s the ticket.
When I read about all the strange goings on with the odd branding decisions made inside Stellantis, I have to wonder if something else is going on behind the scenes with these decisions.
In general, the US market and companies operating here do brand much differently than in other mature markets like Asia and Europe. For example, we have Honda and Acura so that the lowly Hondas don’t contaminate the perception of luxury that the Acura name represents. Most of the rest of the world just has additional Honda models and no one makes a fuss about it.
Maybe there is some move inside Stellantis to bring more order to the overall brand alphabet soup that they put themselves in by means of the non–stop acquiring of other brands rather than just building your own internally. I’ve never had much respect for that type of expansion/growth within a company; if you want to compete in a segment build your own stuff and actually compete! Buying your way into it is the cheater’s way in my humble opinion.
Pardon the ongoing rant but this is an area where I do a lot of my work so it is interesting to me and maddening at the same time. So what could be going on?
Stellantis has too many brands it’s acquired to go into and they span the globe. When you look at other large and successful companies (from a branding POV) you have much more clarity.
Look at Apple. There are no other brands under that umbrella unless you count Beats (and those likely will eventually be rolled up unless they completely separate the music business which is possible). They have a lot of models of computer, phone, speakers etc that all roll up to the Apple brand. For a more relevant example, look at Tesla. One brand many models.
One company that is similar to Stellantis that I have a lot of experience with is Coca-Cola. So many brands. How many people know that Fanta, fairlife milk or Minute Maid and Simply OJ are Coke brands? This is where I think the conversation gets interesting…
What if Stellantis is concerned about the parent brand not having any real recognition? What could they do? A lot of the individual brands have history and loyalty and you can’t just throw that away. These moves could be experiments along these lines. Separate out the popular models into their own brands, start up a branding campaign for the parent brand and then roll all the sub–brands into the parent under transferring their “brands” into model names.
It would, in my mind, be a colossal failure since you would be throwing away so much equity. And I know I am likely wrong about this as it is just too stupid but then I keep looking at two things:
What they are doing is already massively stupid and corporate executives live in an echo chamber of their own stupidity sometimes.
At any rate, I welcome the next chapter of the ongoing Stumbles of Stellantis®.
I think you’ve got it wrong.
Stellantis is the modern equivalent of AMC in the US and British Leyland in the UK. In both instances the smaller automakers of their respective countries combined to try to raise capital and cross-share platforms to save money. In the end they ended up being parasitic against each other.
Stellantis is an international conglomeration of failing companies trying to maintain a foothold of relevancy and stave off their demise. In doing so they compete against themselves and create even smaller niches that just continue to die. If history is any indicator, Stellantis won’t be long for this world.
I don’t disagree from the standpoint of actually operating an automaker and managing platforms across multiple brands while trying to maintain their individuality.
But the ways and means that are employed in the business of branding is not truly connected to the manufacturing strategies in a realistic sense. At least not at most companies.
I claim no direct experience with car manufacturers and accept I may easily be wrong but I have a lot of branding experience.
I hear you and don’t disagree with your thought, but it is just a small portion. They recognize the value of the brand names they have purchased and won’t kill any of them off for fear of losing a subset of brand loyalists, but ultimately they are only hurting themselves and they have to produce many variations of the same product and never really achieve the overall goal.
Here is a link to The Carmudgeon Show discussing exactly what we are talking about. The episode is titled, British Leyland – Yesterday’s Stellantis. My link is from YouTube, but I think you can get it as a podcast as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIOwgSPVWWs&t=1624s
Stellantis is unique among multi-brand car manufacturers in that there are no vehicles branded Stellantis. Ford makes Fords, General Motors makes GMC (maybe a stretch, but they have decades of brand equity, vs 0 for Stellantis), VAG makes Volkswagens. Same with Hyundai, Mitsubishi, etc.
Coca Cola sells Coca Cola products. Pepsi, ditto. Nestlé, same. Disney owns everything but still sells Disney-brand. And they all became conglomerates on the strength of a legitimately successful brand.
Stellantis is like Alphabet or Meta, a corporate structure whose customers aren’t even aware of. It has no personality, no brand association, nothing. And it truly has no reason to exist. It’s a junk drawer brand.
IMO they should dissolve and spin off some of their companies into their own groups. Bring back Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep as a north american brand, dump all the Italian garbaggio into one beautiful bucket of merda, give the French their brands back. Send Tavares back to whatever anger management support group he belongs in. Let all those brands live or most likely die on their own merits.
I sold parts for a number of years, and it was endlessly frustrating remembering to search for “RAM” vs “DODGE”. Especially since we had a huge mix of both in our community (farm town). Not a single customer considered their trucks anything other than a Dodge.
After seeing the new Charger today and discussions of its size, I really hope Chrysler gets a version of it. No reason it shouldn’t be a big luxury sedan with EV power if its bigger than a Lexus LS.
I feel the same way about Cupra, It’s still a SEAT to me. Even if VAG are killing SEAT.
I didn’t hear that they were killing SEAT! I have always wanted to get one as a rental over in Europe.
Ah yes, a “performance brand”. That worked out really well for Pontiac.
Which brand is supposed to sell the “normal” cars? Jeep doesn’t have anything, Chrysler doesn’t have anything, and the Hornet is 40k. Fiat?
Chrysler is basically adrift in the Plymouth/Oldsmobile/Mercury Bermuda Triangle- Obviously they need to figure out a replacement for the 300 at some point, probably based on the new Charger, but from a branding perspective Chrysler is so dead.
Well, 90’s and early 00’s ‘performance’ Pontiacs were FWD I4 and V6 cars with fake vents slapped on them. They really weren’t fooling anybody with the Sunfire.
It kills me that they are re-badging Italian made cars. The quality just isn’t there. My 80 year old Italian boss had a fully loaded Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio and the day he traded it in on a Toyota, he was over the moon with happiness.
Why wasn’t the Durango under the RAM name? Making a “brand” out of one car is silly.
Dodge Durango has a nice alliteration. I think they should make Ram a Dodge again.
Dodge drives dodgy Dart into dirt, deifies Durango as top Dodge dog
Yes.
How about a cheap EV Neon?
As much as I like this idea I equally fear how they can bugger it up.
Well the announcement video is out. Also available as a “sixpack” 6cyl dino juice engine. You had to get 8 minutes into the video to learn that.
I still can’t get over that Stellantis saw all of the retro SUVs and trucks selling like hotcakes and thought, we should resurrect a beloved retro nameplate, but give it zero retro styling cues
Well then they should get rid of the electric door handles before it reaches production.
I had no idea Ram was its own brand. Now that I do I have to ask what the point of that was?
Honestly I forgot that they were still using Ram as its own brand. It always has and always will be a Dodge Ram to me but I could have sworn that they dropped Ram as a lineup years ago. I guess that was just my brain misremembering things to how they really should be.
It is very clearly a Dodge Ram even in Brazil, as evidenced by this absolute banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGpIwanODHw
Referencing a competitor’s failed concept from a now dead brand. Nothing ominous about that, Tim.
We bought a new Ram work truck last week from a dealer and the paperwork says “Dodge RAM 5500”
I guess that kind of spells it out, doesn’t it.
Also, the certificate of origin still says FCA.
Meanwhile, Toyota takes things to the opposite extreme, with multiple iterations of “SUVs and Crossovers” (14), “Cars and Minivans” (13), “Electrified” (17), and “Trucks” (3). Buyers like to have some choices, some options, but that really needs to be somewhere between 5 and 50!
Speaking of weak branding, I saw a Hornet the other day. It was such a strange feeling, because I knew deep down it was a Dodge, and the styling felt very Dodge, but there was absolutely no Dodge branding anywhere on the thing. The grille logo was a Hornet logo, and the rear logos were the Hornet name and some trim identifier.
Maybe Dodge doesn’t want to claim it, either, haha.
So hear me out here… Dodge IS the new Daewoo. Meh vehicles for meh people in 2024. Could only be a matter of time before GM scoops up the remnants of Stellantis’ USA operations and brands. EDIT: With maybe the exception of Jeep (which remains a strong brand worldwide)
<s>We’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the return of the Daewoo Nubira, this time as an EV crossover. Here is that game-changing possibility.</s>
I like your sarcasm, but Stellantis is nothing like Daewoo.
GM scooped up Daewoo because their sales were a flop and could not get any backup from their conglomerate as they were going through a financial scandal and never considered their car division as one of their core businesses.
When your branding journey arrives at “Ram Ramcharger”, you should turn around and go back.
Mazda Mazda3
Pedantically, the legally defined name of that car was the Mazda (make) 3 (model).
Mazda5 tags in.
Pretty sure Mazda’s 3/5/7 models always have the Mazda attached to the model.
On the original purchase papers from Mazda for mine it says Make: Mazda, Model: Mazda3 Sport.
I own a Mazda Mazda6 and a Mazda MX-5, colloquially known as the Miata, but not really since the NB. I guess in that regard it’s like the Dodge Ram. The company changed the name and nobody bothered to notice or care and continued to refer to it by it’s former name.
Ferrari LaFerrari
That’s the Plug-in Hybrid, right? When you purchase the thing to connect it to the wall you’re buying a Ram RamCharger Charger?
No the thing on the wall is the Ram Ramcharger Charger. The thing you plug into that is the Ram Ramcharger ChargerRammer. It requires a forceful shove to connect, demonstrating how Ram Tough© it is.
If I was in charge, I think I’d probably just Fold Ram and Chrysler back into Dodge, and create an actual competitor to Ford/Chevy/Toyota/whatever.
At the dealership level it doesnt really matter much, everyone knows what the families are, if you have customers that like Mopar brands, they’re buying a Ram truck, a Jeep for an Suv, a Pacifica if they need a van. People already essentially see any of these brands as a Mopar, so why spend the extra time and money keeping separate brands and trying to give each one an ethos? It makes zero sense.
Look, I’m a lifelong Mopar guy. I love the history of each brand, and I understand the heartbreak of losing a brand, but decades of mismanagement and sub-par vehicles have done too much damage. You are never going to make chrysler a desirable brand again. Let it die with some dignity, as at least the Pacifica is a damn solid vehicle.
Next gen Pacifica should be a Dodge.
Roll Ram back into Dodge.
Rebadge a couple Jeeps as a Dodge.
Make Dodge a full lineup automaker again, and Let it and Jeep carry the Domestic torch for stellantis.
If handled right, it could be a complete resurgence for the brand, get people talking, and bring the fight to the other automakers where it truly matters: In the hearts of the consumer.
Well put. It truly boggles my mind how most other manufacturers are like “eh, we don’t need 3 brands anymore” (e.g., Mercury) and Stellantis is like “we need 17 brands even if each has 1 car”
I think Chrysler has a fighting chance if Stellantis gets their act together and starts bringing a slew of Peugeots, Citroen and Opel here. They have plenty of factory capacity here or bring them over from overseas but it looks like Stellantis is frustratingly slow to bring anything over here. Why bother then?
At my (the dealership) level, its almost a nightmare scenario. Bringing the cars over is one thing, but you have to factor in all the after sale support. Filters, fluids, body parts, engines, transmissions, training parts people and service techs, who are already dealing with 5 or 6 different brands essentially under 1 roof (“true” Jeep stuff like the wrangler/wagoneer/grand cherokee, FCA stuff like durangos, chargers, 300s, Italian stuff like the Hornet, etc.) it just becomes a parts and service nightmare to deal with all the different fastener styles, specialty tools, training. I’d be pumped to get some Peugot/Citroen stuff, it might even give chrysler a bit of an edge as they build some really cool shit, but I’d understand why they choose not to.
I would keep Chrysler around as luxurious versions of some Dodge models. Keep the Pacifica as a luxurious van. Bring back the Dodge Caravan and Grand Caravan.
I’d also keep the Chrysler 300 around as a luxury version of the Charger.
What in the Holy Iacocca are they thinking over at Stellantis? They have a slew of vehicles in the Peugeot and Opel stables – they could easily resurrect Plymouth (if only for name recognition at this point) and unleash most of those two brands’ vehicles under the Plymouth name and sell metric gorjillions of them here stateside. Just please don’t bring back the “Breeze” name – we don’t need cars whose names evoke flatulence again.
I was curious to get David’s take on the Wagoneer SNAFU, so that was a welcome read. That said, it mystifies me to this day why they cut the recently-updated Durango from their lineup. It had decent name equity and was selling pretty well. Don’t get me started on the Dodge to Ram missteps and other miscues with their remaining brands.
The Durango is still going down the assembly line, and at least for the SSV’s (which in turn will likely mean the civilian models as well), it will gain the Hurricane for 2025.
Well, I mis-remembered. I guess that’s one thing they didn’t mess up.
’24 is the last model year for civilian Durangos AFAIK, could be wrong though. Rumors are that a crossover named the Stealth will take over for the Durango in ’25, with the Durango nameplate possibly making a return as something Body-On-Frame (wouldn’t surprise me to see dodge get a downmarket version of the Wagoneer)
That Stealth rumor started at C&D, and I think pretty well died down. It’s no 2015 Barracuda, something that was fully planned from the get-go.
I can’t imagine Stellantis will just throw the Hurricane in the Durango for fleets, due to the government fleet MPG requirements. It’ll likely live in 2025, but maybe a short model year.
Probably CAFE. Same reason why the Hemi is making a rather sudden exit, and why in 17(?) states you can only get Ram 1500’s with eTorque, and Wranglers as 4Xe’s.