Stellantis, the owner of Jeep, is open to giving up the Cherokee name, says the CEO

Asked in an interview if he would be willing to change the name of the Jeep Cherokee if he is pushed to do so, Mr Tavares said: “We are ready to go anywhere, to the point where we decide with the right people and without intermediaries. ”

“At this stage, I do not know if there is a real problem. But if there is, of course, we will solve it, “Mr Tavares said, adding that he was not personally involved in the talks.

The debate over the Cherokee name is one of the problems facing Mr Tavares, who took control of Stellantis when it was formed earlier this year from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and manufacturer Peugeot PSA. In Wednesday’s interview, Mr Tavares also discussed whether he should reduce the company’s 14 brands, making Fiat factories more competitive and his plan to stay with China.

The Cherokee Nation is the largest Native American tribe in the United States, with approximately 370,000 members, and Jeep has sold millions of vehicles named after it. The car brand expanded its use of the Cherokee name to a compact SUV, a smaller version of the Grand Cherokee, in 2013.

The leader of the Cherokee Nation recently said he would like to see Jeep stop using his tribe’s name on his SUVs. Chuck Hoskin Jr., the chief of the Cherokee Nation, said he believes Jeep has good intentions, but that “it doesn’t honor us with our name plastered on the side of a car,” according to a statement first released to Car and Driver last week.

“The Cherokee nation has an open dialogue with the Stellantis leadership and is looking forward to ongoing talks,” a spokesman for the tribe said on Wednesday. “We appreciate Stellantis’ careful approach to this.”

Mr Tavares’ comments come as a result of a widespread calculation of racial and social injustice in the United States, which was triggered by the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis on Memorial Day weekend last year. In December, the Cleveland Indians decided to give up the longtime nickname of the baseball team after fans and groups of Native Americans criticized it as racist. The NFL’s Washington football team dropped a name that had been seen as a racial insult.

Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee SUVs are among the bestsellers of the US brand, accounting for 43% of Jeep sales in its largest market, according to company figures. Stellantis is launching a long-awaited redesign of the Grand Cherokee later this year.

Mr Tavares said the car industry’s practice of naming cars after Native American tribes was a sign of respect.

“I do not see anything negative here. I think it is just a matter of expressing our creative passion, our artistic abilities “, said Mr. Tavares.

The Jeep brand is alongside profitable drivers such as Ram in the US and Peugeot in Europe. But the company’s 14-brand portfolio also includes some that will have to prove their worth, Mr Tavares said.

Mr Tavares said he asked each brand manager to work on a 10-year plan to develop long-term visibility into product planning.

“I’m telling you, ‘Look, boys, I’ll give you a chance. You have to convince me – you, the CEO of the brand – that you have a vision “, said Mr. Tavares.

After several recovery efforts, the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands from Fiat Chrysler have failed to make significant returns in recent years. The Fiat brand is struggling with aging models and poor sales, which has caused a problem of overcapacity in the company’s Italian factories.

Even the hugely popular Chrysler has declined in recent years, now selling only three models compared to the six it wore a decade ago. The brand’s sales in the US also fell to a third of their volume in 2015, according to company figures.

In terms of PSA, the DS brand – which focuses on state-of-the-art sedans and SUVs – increased its market share last year, but continues to lag far behind some of its German competitors.

“Once we give them a chance to fail, we must be fair,” Mr Tavares said. “If the rest of the company is doing the right thing and there’s a part of the company that’s pulling them all down, we’re going to have to take that into account.”

The Portuguese executive has built his reputation in the automotive industry as an expert in transformations. Peugeot bled money when it hired Mr Tavares in 2013. Since then, the French carmaker has gone from losing 5 billion euros, the equivalent of about $ 6 billion, in 2012 to becoming one of the most profitable manufacturers. of cars on the mass market in the industry. . Last year, it reported a net profit of EUR 2.17 billion, or about $ 2.62 billion, with an adjusted operating margin of 7.1% in its core automotive business.

This time, Mr Tavares has a longer list of tasks, including integrating the two companies’ European affairs and reducing losses in China.

In Europe, Mr Tavares visited Fiat Chrysler plants – including an Alfa Romeo plant 80 miles south of Rome – and encouraged them to evaluate their performance against PSA plants. In addition, employees at the Fiat a Fiat Chrysler plant in Mirafiori, Italy, visited Citroën’s PSA plant in Madrid, and Mr Tavares said they were surprised by the observed uncovered cost savings.

The car executive said the new company could achieve its cost-saving goals in Europe without shutting down factories.

Asked what lessons he learned from the lack of chips that slowed car factories around the world, Mr Tavares said large suppliers were not sending the signals they were receiving about the approaching crisis. “We were not protected,” he said. “This is a clear lesson learned.”

Mr Tavares said the shift from industry to electrification would continue to be based on government subsidies and other financial incentives for buyers, until carmakers learned how to lower production costs over the next few years.

“If we offer extremely efficient electric vehicles, but no one can buy them because they are expensive, what’s the point of an environmental perspective?” he said.

In China, the combined sales of Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler accounted for less than 1% of a market that sold 20 million vehicles last year, according to industry data. Fiat Chrysler has long struggled to make a profit on the world’s largest car market, while the French carmaker sold only 45,965 vehicles in China last year, continuing a rapid multi-year decline.

Mr Tavares said Stellantis was not considering leaving China, ruling out an option he said was still on the table when the company began trading in New York earlier this year.

“We can’t be far from the largest market in the world,” he said.

Write to Nick Kostov to [email protected] and Nora Naughton to [email protected]