zdave87

FIAT to kill Dodge

I guess this is why they (FIAT) are going to create the Ram brand of trucks.

Saki GT

Where in the article did it state that Dodge was being killed? All I saw was that many Dodge cars are being ended.

zdave87

It was on the MSN homepage.

Vanishing Point

Maybe, Fiat will do a better job in the service dept. this time regarding their cars. Anyone who has owned a Fiat or Alpha will recall the cars were fine up until it was serviced and then it never quite ran as well or as reliable.

Saki GT

At the end of the day, the dealerships will be the same, with the same people.

Chrysler's biggest problem is its quality control sucks. Its second biggest problem is its product mostly sucks. It does have (diluted) Jeep, the Ram trucks and minivans, but the rest of its cars are all not competitive. The 300 was a great car, but its dated now, and when you price from $22k, its hard to take the car upmarket.

If you think about Dodge cars, what is there to miss? Viper imo is a great car but drifted far away from its affordable sports car beginnings a la NSX, and is largely irrelevant now - for $90k I'm not buying a Dodge.

The Charger is bloated and of limited appeal, plus is a small volume car. At $40k, I'm not buying a Dodge 4000 lb coupe.

Dodge's "bread and butter" cars all really are terrible, plain vanilla designs, with bad torque steer and hard, hard plastic interiors a la the 90s. Chrysler to me is the last hold out of accountant engineered cars. It cheaps out on everything to make money at the expense of the user experience.

luder_5555

the only thing that i can see good in the whole deal is that we will have alfa's coming state side again...

Saki GT

I think Dodge should become just trucks and minivans, Keep Jeep with serious off road vehicles only, and fill the car line up with low-budget Fiats, and mid level Alfas. Take Chrysler up market.

dammitjim

This. The cars just suck. I'm offended that we're expected to want to buy them.

rockville

I didn't read the article to mean Dodge the brand would be canned. Really, would that make sense? Why create the "RAM" brand and then kill all Dodge branded vehicles? If that was the plan wouldn't it make more sense to take all the models which will be Rams and call then "Dodge" and still kill at the existing Dodge vehicles that would die anyway?

Killing off most of the existing Dodge cars (most probably means keeping only the ones with HEMI engine options ) is consistent with the idea that RAM will be trucks (and SUVs?) and Dodge will be mostly FIAT rebadges.

I may not be right but I think the above is logical and fits within the current and previous statements by the company.

rockville

Seriously, if that offends you don't look at how much Porsche charges for options that Honda includes for free and REALLY don't look at how much some people want for things on Ebay!