Tagged: fiat

Jeep has signed a three-year, $45 million marketing deal with an Italian professional football club. 

The agreement could help the brand make inroads in Europe, where SUVs are uncommon.

The Jeep logo will soon appear on the backs of the jerseys worn by the Italian soccer team Juventus.  The team will also get Jeeps for club use. 

Michigan Radio sports commentator John U. Bacon says it’s an aggressive marketing ploy that will almost certainly boost Jeep’s brand awareness in Europe.

"In most of Europe, it’s soccer and everything else -- it’s like hockey in Canada," says Bacon.  "So this kind of exposure, it has to give Jeep a shot in the arm.  This team’s visibility is as big as it gets.    If the soccer team says it’s cool, it’s cool."

Governor Snyder’s focus will be on automotive and alternative energy companies on his first official business trip to Europe.

Transportation equipment and chemicals account for more than half of Michigan’s $6 billion in annual exports to Europe.

The governor will start out in Turin, Italy, meeting with executives at Fiat and other companies. Fiat is the parent company of Chrysler.

From there, the governor heads to Stuttgart, Germany, where his itinerary includes a presentation on Michigan’s chemical industry and advanced power storage systems – as well as meetings with executives at BASF, Bosch, and Daimler.

The governor made a trade swing through Asia in September.  

Gov. Snyder returns to Michigan on March 24th.

GENEVA (AP) - Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says he may shift the date of the Dodge Dart's production launch off of April 1 to "to avoid being jinxed" by an April Fool's Day launch.

The Dodge Dart is the first Chrysler model to use Fiat architecture under the nearly three-year-old alliance.

Marchionne on Tuesday called the Dodge Dart "a huge step forward in terms of moving the brand into the American heartland."

Fiat, which controls a 58.8 percent share of Chrysler, sells the city car 500 in the United States, hitting sales of 2 million last year.

It plans to bring over the 500L - a larger version of the 500 that was launched at the Geneva Motor Show on Tuesday - in 2013.

Chrysler is on the mend.  

The Detroit automaker made money last year for the first time since 2005.

The profit -- $183 million -- was modest.  But it would have been much larger, were it not for the company's decision to pay off its federal loans years early.  The payoff resulted in a $500 million charge.

Chrysler also reported strong sales for January of this year, up 44 percent from the same month last year, driven largely by demand for the company’s passenger cars.  

The company expects 2012 to be up to eight times more profitable than 2011.

Full-year results for Chrysler’s partner Fiat were not as good.  

Car sales in Europe are dismal as the economy of the region struggles with a sovereign debt crisis. 

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is striking an upbeat note about the US auto industry—and Detroit—at this year’s Detroit Auto Show.

Detroit’s smallest automaker posted the biggest gains in 2011, with sales soaring 26 percent.

In fact, Chrysler is now doing better than Fiat, the Italian automaker that helped rescue Chrysler from the brink of collapse in 2009.

Marchionne says despite Fiat’s current troubles, it’s helped Chrysler’s new product line. He says its newly-unveiled compact car, the Dodge Dart, is “the first tangible result of the collaboration between Fiat and Chrysler."

Fiat's ownership stake in Chrysler goes up 5 percent now that the company is building a car that gets 40 mpg in the U.S.

The added stake was part of the agreement with the U.S. government when it bailed out the auto company in the 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.

The Associated Press has more:

The U.S. government...gave Fiat a 20 percent stake in Chrysler in July of 2009 in exchange for Fiat's management expertise and use of its technology. Fiat gradually raised its ownership by meeting performance goals and buying the government's stake in Chrysler.

Chrysler said early Thursday that a pre-production version of the new Dodge Dart compact got 40 mpg in testing by the Environmental Protection Agency in late December. Full testing for the mileage sticker that will go on the Dart's window has not been finished. The window sticker testing is done under different standards and could be lower than 40 mpg.

The AP reports that the added 5 percent comes from a UAW trust fund that pays for retiree health care. After giving up the five percent, that fund still owns 41.5 percent of Chrysler.

Automobile Magazine has more on the Dart, which will be built Belvidere, Illinois:

Engine choices will comprise two “Tigershark” inline-fours displacing 2.0 and 2.4 liters, as well as a turbocharged 1.4-liter MultiAir inline-four. Chrysler has also said there will be a choice of three transmissions for the compact Dart sedan. The Dart is based on a lengthened and widened version of the platform that underpins Europe’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta hatchback.

The Dart will be revealed at the North American International Auto Show starting next week. We'll have more then.