French Leave

I should have known it was too good to be true.

When Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot (also known as PSA) merged earlier this year, forming a new company called Stellantis - sounds like the name of a sunken continent, doesn't it?  - Carlos Tavares, the Peugeot chairman who shepherded the merger and became the head of the new Stellantis company, was planning to bring the Peugeot brand back to the United States.  I was looking forward to this, as Peugeot is the only French car brand I ever liked, and I was especially looking forward to hopefully checking out the new Peugeot 308 hatchback (below), assuming Peugeot would even bother with hatchback here, or at least a sedan based on the 308's platform.  Such a product, I thought, might tempt me away from Volkswagen - which VW has made a lot easier of late with its rotten product choices for the U.S. as it leans more and more toward SUVs.

When Tavares realized that he suddenly had more brands in the company than he knew what to do with, he concluded that offering one more European Stellantis brand in the United States at a time when Fiat is failing and Alfa Romeo is barely hanging on seemed to be a bit too much. So he canceled plans to bring Peugeot back to the States and has decided to concentrate on the future of the new company's four American brands - the amalgam of brands once known as the Chrysler Group.

Are you kidding me?

I mean, consider the four brands in question.  There are Jeep and Ram, the macho light-truck brands that offer pickups and SUVs that I don't want, and Dodge and Chrysler, which offer boring cars I don't want or, in the case of Dodge, muscle cars I wouldn't dare touch.  Jeep and Ram are obviously profitable for Stellantis, but Dodge and Chrysler have been starved for new product of late.  Tavares is particularly interested in rejuvenating Chrysler, which had been the flagship marque of the eponymously named company that created it before devolving into a nameplate mainly for luxury minivans, an oxymoron if there ever was one.    

Needless to say, I am bummed about Peugeot not coming back to the U.S. after all, because Peugeot has some really interesting  product with more to come in the future.  Also, the quality of Peugeot cars has improved dramatically since the brand quit the U.S. market in 1991, and if the quality of its cars is as good as my Peugeot bicycle - I particularly revere my own Peugeot ten-speed road bike, 26 years old and still going strong - I was definitely ready to consider a Peugeot as my next car.  So this news is a disappointment that has curdled into utter disgust.  Once again, I've found myself waiting for a moment that just won't come.

Okay, maybe Tavares can resuscitate Chrysler and give it better and more interesting product (no word on what happens to Dodge, though I assume its current positioning as a performance brand will be strengthened).  With a new administration in the White House focusing on increasing fuel economy, we might get smaller cars similar to the Peugeot 308, and with the growing importance of developing electric cars - the reason Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot merged in the first place, so, as Stellantis, they could afford to develop them efficiently - we could get electric vehicles from Dodge and Chrysler that puts Volkswagen's ID lineup to shame.  And yes, Tavares does plan to build up Alfa Romeo's presence in the U.S. (Fiat, I really don't care about.)  But I am not optimistic about how this is all going to turn out, particularly with Dodge and Chrysler.  Previous efforts at strengthening those brands haven't worked out so well.

I guess we won't get Opel back either.  

This is a shame, because the Corsa (above) is really cool.

But, Mr. Tavares, could you at least please start selling Peugeot bicycles in America again?

Hail Stellantis! 😠

Peugeot was supposed to come back to the U.S. in 2026.  Hopefully by then I'll be Paris checking out Peugeot cars on their home turf.  But I wouldn't bet on that either.

FCA + PSA

One story that slipped through the media in recent weeks due to the Trump impeachment inquiry is the announcement of a merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Peugeot Société Anonyme (PSA), which would create the fourth largest automaker in the world, after Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai - displacing the current fourth-place automaker, General Motors.  You only need to know all that to see what a game changer this merger will be.

PSA chairman Carlos Tavares (above) has promised that none of the brands sold by either company will be retired, particularly when the whole idea behind the merger is that each company is strong in some parts of the world but not others and they need to shore up each other.  And one big reason Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot need each other is because of the budding electric-vehicle (EV) revolution that's expected to blossom in the 2020s and beyond.  Both firms want to develop electric vehicles to compete with automakers already invested in the EV market, and neither one can do it alone.

Questions about the Peugeot brand's planned return to North America have arisen as a result of this planned merger, with some fearing that such a return was now less likely.  In fact, it now appears that Peugeot may return to the U.S. and Canada sooner than its planned 2026 return.  And that will certainly be good news for people who want more choices in the import-brand market, particularly when it comes to European brands.  It's not clear whether Opel, which PSA bought from General Motors in 2017, would return as well.

With Volkswagen's commitment to offering compact hatchbacks to its loyalist Europhile customers in America in doubt (no more base Golfs for us??) and its push toward more SUVs in America, Peugeot might tempt this VW boy in buying one of its cars, particularly if it were to offer a compact car like the 308 (above),  something I've already indicated before.  Of course, Peugeot would probably emphasize SUVs, too, but who knows - the new-car market could very well change by the middle of the coming decade. And it remains to be seen just what sort of electric vehicles the new company plans to produce, and for which markets.  Add a few unpleasant truths about the Peugeot brand - quality control that makes Fiats look bulletproof, the brand's emphasis on upscale cars rather than small volume cars when it last sold cars in North America - and you start to realize that how the brand will fare in the New World the second time around is anyone's guess.  Just don't expect big changes in the U.S. auto market right away, though; for now, the primary focus of the FCA-PSA merger is to concentrate on technology sharing and corporate integration.  Yet more unknown variables in the whole FCA-PSA equation, to be sure, but variables that will nonetheless keep me interested in the time to come.

And I just might buy a Peugeot car if it turns out that its quality has approached the level of Peugeot bicycles (I've had my Peugeot bike for 25 years).  I'd definitely buy another Peugeot bicycle, if they're ever sold in America again.  

Wouldn't You Really Rather Have an Opel?

In my earlier commentary on GM's sale of Opel and Vauxhall to Peugeot, I noted that many of the rebadged Opels sold in America in the 1990s were seen as lackluster by consumers in the States.

But what of some of the more recent Opel cars rebadged for sale in the U.S.?  Specifically, what of all those interesting cars at your neighborhood Buick dealership?

Buick and Opel have a history dating back to 1958, when the porthole division began selling Opel cars in America as captive imports.  Cars like the Kadett, the Manta and two-seat Opel GT weren't exactly big hits, but they had cult followings in this country - especially the GT, the Corvette-style look of which more than compensated for its Karmann Ghia-like performance.  Indeed, the connection between the two brands is so great that when GM brought  a sedan over to the U.S. from its Japanese subsidiary Isuzu, it sold it as the Buick/Opel, even though it was neither.

Opel, in fact, has been instrumental in giving Buick a sense of credibility it hasn't had since the original Riviera coupe debuted in 1963.  The current Buick Regal, which debuted in 2010 to considerable acclaim, is a Canadian-built version of the Opel Insignia, while the Buick Cascada convertible (below), which has received mixed reviews, is an Opel made in Germany, the real thing.

And watch out for the all-new Regal debuting at the New York Auto Show in April - it will be based on the all-new Opel Insignia (below).  This car may also be built in Germany.

And this time, a version of the Opel Insignia Sports Tourer wagon (below) may also be included in the new Regal's lineup.

And by the way, the compact Buick Encore SUV is based on Opel's Mokka model.  Opel's engineering and technology have also made their way into other Buicks, including the Michigan-built entry-level Verano, now its in last year and based on the same platform used by the Opel Astra and the Chevrolet Cruze. 

How will Opel continue to supply Buick with cars and components when it will be under the ownership of Peugeot, which is still not back in the U.S. market?  That's covered - for now.  The GM/Peugeot deal in the Opel/Vauxhall sale continues existing supply arrangements for Buick, as well as for GM's Holden brand in Australia, at least for the next six years, which is approximately how long the current generations of Opels should be in production.  But as current Opel models are phased out, and as future Opels are developed on Peugeot platforms, the future for Buick looks problematic.  As Kyle Campbell noted in the New York Daily News, sales of Opel-based Buicks accounted for almost two-thirds of the brand's sales in February 2017, and losing the Opel influence in future products once the current generation of cars is gone might be hard for Buick to overcome.  And at least one option being considered - outsourcing engineering from GM affiliates in China -  isn't exactly an idea that will make the American road that belongs to Buick great again. 

These are classy cars, though, and they're responsible for jettisoning Buick's stodgy image while maintaining its reputation for understatement.  And even though Opel is seen as a middlebrow car back in Germany, its higher-end models have been more successful in America than its volume car, the Astra, which was briefly sold as a Saturn in America just before that brand bit the dust.  There was a bitter irony to the Astra's brief availability in America; though GM created Saturn to show that it could build a good small car for the masses in its home market, Saturn's homegrown Ion, a successor to the original Saturn sedan of the early 1990s, was replaced by a Belgian-built Opel that turned out not to have any mass appeal in the States.  The recent collaborations between Buick have borne better fruit of late for GM, giving Buick a good deal of respectability and, more importantly, good sales.  It's also made Opel more important to the American market as a product development partner for Buick than it could ever be as a stand-alone brand here.  But without Opel, how will Buick fare then?

A spokesman for Buick told the press that the division "will continue to deliver our product plans with excellence and precision," and that can mean a lot of things.  But, as Kyle Campbell wrote, it should mean that GM should look at the automotive trends in Europe and learn from them, even if GM itself will largely become absent from the European market, if it wants to continue Buick's  resurgence.  "Though General Motors will no longer have a foothold in Europe," Campbell says, "that doesn’t mean it can simply ignore the continent. Moving forward, it must keep a watchful eye on the trends that arise in Germany, France and the U.K., because, as history shows, it’s only a matter of time before they crop up here as well."

And outsourcing from China simply won't cut it.