The Fiat Group today purchased the remaining Chrysler LLC shares held by the U.S. and Canadian governments. The Italian company acquired a 1.5% fully diluted stake in Chrysler Group LLC from Canada for US$125 million, and a 6% stake from the United States Department of the Treasury for a price of US$ 500 million.
After acquiring the shares in the two separate deals, the Fiat Group now controls a 53.5% fully diluted equity interest in Chrysler LLC.
Upon the completion of the deal, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Tim Massad released this statement:
“With today's closing, the US government has exited its investment in Chrysler at least six years earlier than expected. This is a major accomplishment and further evidence of the success of the Administration’s actions to assist the US auto industry, which helped save a million jobs during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
The latest example of this model comes from Chrysler’s performance division Mopar: The event is called Moventure. Get it? They had a call for submissions for filling ten teams that would drive Chrysler division vehicles from Detroit to Golden, Colorado at the NHRA Mopar Mile High Nationals, a “full throttle drag racing series.” The team with the most points stand to win $5,000 in Mopar parts and accessories.
Each brand (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and Fiat) has two teams of two with challenges all along the way to the final destination, think something similar to Chevy’s SxSW Road Trip from 2010 and 2011. It’s kind of funny that my article on the Chevy event garnered a comment stating “*waits for Chrysler to emulate Ford’s Fiesta Movement, just like GM did? ;-p” Apparently the answer is July 2011, sort of.
This is coming out of the Mopar division, not the parent company, though looking how it’s being shared on twitter the Chrysler brand twitter accounts and Chrysler PR people are Retweeting content from the Mopar teams, similar to what happened with both GM and Ford events.
Fiesta Movement was very different from this model. It was 6 months with 100 cars given out that gave time for participants to build an audience. A more likely Ford use of this template was the Ford Fusion Relay Race that used similar teams on a short multi-day road trip.
The Mopar event participation is like others who have blazed this social trail. Most of the social conversation is from the teams with the brand (or agencies) supporting the conversation through Retweets and @ mentions on twitter. There is some video content too that’s being created but as you can tell (image at right) the views are pretty low even after 24 hours since posted.
I really wonder about if these events are worth all of the effort. I’m sure blog coverage is a big win for the organizers and for this Moventure contest. So far there has been zero coverage from the top two automotive blogs – AutoBlog and Jalopnik; however, there was coverage from Car & Driver, Torque News, and CNBC (they reprinted the press release verbatim.)
What is success and what is a good amount of social conversation and who it was from is rarely discussed because no one ever goes back and evaluates their effort against competitor efforts. This I know after actively following many over the years, it’s 90%+ people involved in the effort who discuss and socially share it (team members, brand, and agencies.) There is very little spillover effect unless you really invest big dollars engaging celebrities, philanthropy and market the hell out of it – think Mercedes Tweet Race – or you do something more involved like the 6-month Ford Fiesta Movement.
In full disclosure, I have some good friends that make up two of the teams on this road trip and I really do wish them well. From what I can tell they are doing what they can to generate interest and discussion about their involvement. It’s just that no one really cares, except those participating, when it comes down to it.
I’ve seen the output reports on efforts like this and everyone shows an impressive looking number of “mentions” and a summation of all the video views/comments/tweets, and then some screen-shots of blog coverage and well that’s it and off everyone goes to the next project. I expect Moventure is no different and that's not a criticism of the Mopar effort. It's more a result of how this model historically works.
In the 1950s, products for women were no doubt designed and marketed by men. Take for example the 1955 Dodge Le Femme, a truly absurd car (by today’s standards) that came with a matching purse, raincoat and umbrella as well as a bright pint interior with rose-patterned trim.
It’s the equivalent of offering a car today with a…tampon dispenser in the glovebox.
Across the pond there was the Daimler 104 Ladies’ Model with electric windows, a simplified gear change (no, I did not make that up), an umbrella and a vanity case under the dashboard.
Before you watch the following video, take a minute to ponder this: You are sitting behind the steering wheel of an exotic, brand new Italian supercar, getting ready to drag race a V10-powered Dodge Viper on the quarter mile strip in front of a crowd of 100, or perhaps even more people. But when the race begins you start rolling backwards…
Oh yes, that’s right; the owner of the Ferrari 458 Italia that you’re about to see in the clip and who was pitted against a Dodge Viper at the ICAR motorsports complex situated just outside of Montreal in Canada, paddle shifted his car’s dual clutch auto transmission into reverse!
The Chrysler Group’s newly formed Street and Racing Technology (SRT) brand has released pricing on its latest crop of models, which include the 2012 Chrysler 300 SRT8, the 2012 Dodge Charger SRT8, the 2012 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 and the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8.
All four SRT8 models are powered by the Chrysler Group’s new 6.4-liter HEMI V8 with Fuel Saver Technology that cranks out 470 horsepower (351kW) and 470 lb-ft (637Nm) of peak torque (465 lb.-ft. / 630 Nm in the Grand Cherokee SRT8).
It's another million fan milestone for BMW this last month as they crossed 6 million fans and have annihilated the challenge they were receiving from Audi earlier this year. It's tough to say how much of BMW's fan growth is due to sheer brand advocacy or how much of it is due to marketing efforts from all of its International markets. What is known is that the BMW team is leveraging the behaviors of the Facebook platform in creative ways.
Take for instance the latest activation from BMW where they are showcasing their Two Originals hommage promoting the original 328i with a revised future 328i concept. Part of the effort is a Facebook application that let's their fans create their own film and personal expression that they can then share with friends. It actually gives people a reason to share. It's not just a share button next to a video or promotion asking people to simply "like" a post. This is content integration that is creative and self-expressive which is what social media is all about.
The BMW example pulls in photo content from a Facebook profile and uses that to express the person's originality. It's not too much different than a recent viral execution from Intel called the Museum of Me that also recycled a user's Facebook content for brand benefit.
Meanwhile other brands continue to buy ad units promoting their page. Of note in June were some significant ad buys from Fiat USA who seemed to have an ad pushing their fan page to me about every second or third time I logged into Facebook, oddly I've been a fan for several months. Lexus also ran some ad units that drove to their fan page which accounts for their double-digit 10% growth in June.
Mazda, Dodge and MINI also experienced some decent fan growth in June. Dodge is expanding their social presence and activating some attention to the SRT brand with its Driving SRT and SRT Track Experience fan pages. Oddly the primary Dodge fan page does not "Like" these pages. Though fan growth for Dodge is not really being driven by the SRT pages; instead, Dodge has been running ad units also promoting its brand pages last June. I did not run across media for Mazda or MINI in June, but that's not to say there was no media or promotion through other mediums like email.
Overall it was a pretty slow month in June for automotive Facebook fan pages. The latest development is Google+ in the past week and already Ford has created a page. Perhaps someday this report will be looking at Google+ Circle numbers.
A new U.S. market compact sedan to be developed by Fiat and built by Chrysler is set to make its debut appearance at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit in the beginning of next year, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The as-of-yet unnamed model will be badged as Dodge and powered by a Fiat-derived 1.4-liter turbocharged gasoline engine. It’ll also do 40 mpg combined, or at least it will if Fiat wants to net itself a further 5% of Chrysler from Mr. Monopoly Uncle Sam.
The results are in for JD Power’s latest 2011 U.S. Initial Quality study that looks at the first 90 days of ownership and the news is not good for Ford Motor Company. The Dearborn-based company tumbled from fifth place and highest-ranking non-luxury automaker last year to 23rd in 2011 with 116 problems per 100 vehicles. Analysts claim that Ford’s freefall is due to complaints related to the company’s onboard MyFord Touch infotainment systems.
Even worse, Dodge was placed last in the list with 137 problems per 100 cars. Scion, MINI, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi and Suzuki didn’t fare well either occupying the last places in the study.
A dozen vehicles from the three core Chrysler brands covering more than half of the company’s 2011 models are being recalled in the United States to fix a potential problem with the steering column.
The recall covers 11,351 vehicles and affects certain 2011 model year Dodge Journey crossovers, Jeep Wranglers, Chrysler 200s, Chrysler 200 Convertibles, Dodge Avengers, Dodge Nitros, Jeep Liberty SUVs, Dodge Calibers, Jeep Compass crossovers, Jeep Patriots, Dodge Grand Caravans and Chrysler Town & Country minivans.
1938 Alfa 8C 2900B Le Mans Those are incredibly good looking Jaguars On of the most remarkable and well designed instrument gauge clusters I've ever seen Fiat 1400b junior Ghia Awesome use of a hoodscoop to make an ugly car better looking Sorry, I don't know where these came from anymore, but I bet they were from websites that I've posted from in the past month
It's a Hyundai Accent sold in Mexico. Well, I guess it might be proverbial to have a Mexican accent... but it isn't what comes to mind when you think of a Dodge attitude - like durable, powerful Hemi, or drag racing ready Super Sport cars of the 1960's.
Tere took better galleries of the cars, like the Ghostbuster "Ecto 1" and the characters from Cars 2 http://justacargal-s.blogspot.com/ so check them out too if you're ready for more
After acquiring the shares in the two separate deals, the Fiat Group now controls a 53.5% fully diluted equity interest in Chrysler LLC. 
