Stellantis has a Big Problem
Regrettably, for the fans of the “Brotherhood of Muscle,” Stellantis bought into the current administration's EV mandate. They canceled our beloved Hemis and are presently rolling out vehicles nobody on either side of the pond wants to buy. With the EV mandate, the US Government and other world governing bodies were promising huge kickbacks and incentives. So, even if an EV car failed, at least the bottom wouldn't be rock hard, and they'd get some money to pay for their innovation, tooling, and development costs.
Even with that, with this current election result, Stellantis is going to be in a pickle of all pickles. Just like in 2016, Trump upended Obama's EPA mandates in the first 72 hours he was in office. He's already claimed that this is also another “day one” issue for him, so we can rest assured that the EV mandate and the onerous 2025+ EPA regulations are going to be rolled back or eliminated.
Biden’s EPA is trying his best to thwart this by forcing California's regulations down everyone’s throats, well at least the 17 States that signed onto California’s CARB mandates, and soon, all the free money for EV adoption is going to evaporate. Companies like Ford, who never got out of the internal combustion game, are going to be looking very good.
Stellantis, the world's largest automaker with a fleet of vehicles for sale that nobody wants in the first place, isn't going to be buoyed by government incentives. We’ll be looking at their lineup for the first time, and there’s no V8. Stellantis, who built its entire identity on loud, powerful, crazy V8 engines, never produced enough 4-cylinder vehicles, hybrids, or EVs to offset the CAFE requirements, thus dooming their V8s. I think the waves are going to crash up against the rocks hard by the end of this year. 2025 is going to be an earnings bloodbath for them in North America. Likely, 2026-2027 won't be much better unless they can shoehorn a V8 into that Charger Daytona.
The Landscape Has Changed Overnight
While I agree that the I6 Hurricane is the engine people want when compared to the EV, it's still not the engine they'd pick, given an optional V8. I would bet the farm that Chevy and Ford will jump full-on back into V8 production, and I wouldn't be surprised if another Camaro didn't magically reappear by 2026-2027.
I remember reading a piece on the End of the Mopar V8s due to the Obama CAFE hike. Remember that, had Trump not punted/changed/killed the CAFE standard back in 2016 that was to go into effect in 2017, Dodge would have lost all their passenger car V8s by the end of 2018. But, as luck would have it, Trump won, and they got a reprieve. We would have had no Redeye, no Super Stock, and no 1320 Challengers if Trump had not won in 2016. The original Demon might have been the end of the line of the second golden age of the muscle car.
Keep in mind the EPA is an executive branch agency, so Trump doesn't need Congress to squash or amend the CAFE standards. The primary pain point for domestic automakers is the EV mandate, which Trump has said numerous times is going to be eliminated. This won't prevent states like California and New York from maintaining their own state mandates, but it will allow the rest of free America to hopefully have more affordable real engine options in the future. I fully expect Trump to roll back the EPA this time. Also, Elon Musk is supposedly going to take the government efficiency oversight position, so we'll see what he does with that. Musk might own Tesla, but I think he hates the EPA more than us car guys do.
Is There Hope for the Future?
All I can say is that the future is a bit uncertain, but the worst of it was yesterday. It only gets better from here in automotive terms. Pull back the regulations, let consumers decide what we want and allow manufacturers to build them. That's all that needs doing, and I have a feeling that's what is going to be allowed to happen.
But is it too late for Dodge to come back? With Tim Kuniskis back on board and the head Stellantis stepping down it’s a big move in the right direction. It takes a few years to get new models from design to production, but powertrain adaptation only takes a fraction of that time. So, the question becomes does Stellantis suck it up and let Dodge start building a new generation of V8s? Especially now that
we know
everyone at Dodge wanted to keep the V8 besides the now deposed CEO. Or are they going to dig in and stick with the EV nonsense?
2025-2026 are going to be utterly painful because they picked the wrong horse. Are they going to move quickly to position themselves to capitalize on the more favorable EPA standards? What we see them do in the next 60 days is going to determine if Dodge remains a viable brand or not in the future. We’ll have to wait and see.
