Tavares Talks Up Dodge, Chrysler Brands, Even as Models Disappear

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• The Chrysler and Dodge product lineups have been gutted over the course of many years.

• But Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares (above) is upbeat about the future of both brands—and all 14 Stellantis brands—because they’re all making money, he tells journalists this week.

• While it’s important to remain humble, Tavares also said Stellantis “will be the only credible challenger to Tesla—you will see that.”

Reading the tea leaves in Detroit for the past month, one might have serious questions about the viability about two storied brands—Chrysler and Dodge—that have been joined at the hip since the former acquired the latter in 1928.

Since then, the two brands have reinvented themselves multiple times with the introduction of small cars, family cars, minivans, convertibles, performance cars, crossover, and SUVs—some better received than others.

The passing of time, however, has gutted each brand’s lineup. Dodge’s pickup trucks are now part of Ram, and the Challenger coupe and Charger sedan will be gone next year, leaving only the Durango SUV and 2023 Hornet compact crossover in the lineup.

Things appear to be even more dire for the Chrysler brand. When the 300 sedan ends production next year (on the same platform as the Challenger/Charger), Chrysler will have only the Pacifica minivan carrying the brand shield. Look back 15 years, and Chrysler had seven different models in the portfolio; 10 years ago, that number fell to three.

This kind of paring is familiar—it happened before the demise of Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Mercury, Saturn, and countless other discontinued brands. To date, parent company Stellantis has announced an all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona SRT concept as a preview of a production model arriving by 2024.

Such a promise has not yet been made on the product front for Chrysler, even though Stellantis promises Chrysler will launch its first battery-electric vehicle in 2025—perhaps a production version of the Chrysler Airflow concept—and will have a full battery-electric portfolio by 2028.

Chrysler and Dodge are only two of the 14 brands within the Stellantis group globally, and CEO Carlos Tavares sounds quite optimistic about the future for these two legacy US brands, based on his comments to journalists this week during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

“I am a happy CEO,” he said in response to a question about how Stellantis is managing so many automotive brands, which include Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat in Europe. “I am a privileged guy looking at fantastic things being done brand by brand.”