Jeep used to be a treasured American brand. But after Stellantis bought the iconic brand, workers say execs slashed jobs and quality to drive up profits. Now customers say the new $80,000 Jeep Wagoneer has mechanical issues fresh off the lot.
Video dives deeper than problems with the new jeep highlighting worker grievances on the line, customer experience failures and union struggles.
Having owned several Chrysler and Fiat cars, Chrysler has always been pretty shit. They’ve had to be rescued from bankruptcy a couple times, and have a history of badly-performing mergers and buyouts (DaimlerChrysler, Diamond Star Motors, Cerberus, FCA, etc). Jeep people will defend Jeep, but that’s it.
To be fair, Jeep was never really the most reliable American brand. Neither was Chrysler. But certainly since the ownership of Fiat, the reliability has definitely gone down. Stayed the same at the least.
I think Jeep and Chryslers biggest strength in their earlier years was even though they weren’t incredibly reliable, they were easy to work on and parts were always available on part store shelves. Now they are the exact opposite, especially with modern car designers being obsessed with cramming a tiny engine into an even tinier engine bay, with less than an inch of room around the entire thing for tools.
Designing your car so that the only way to work on the engine is to remove it is extremely anti-consumer, anti-repair, and exactly what I would expect from Stellantis. Even their dealer tech info is garbage.