Several car brands are at risk of closure or divestment. Stellantis' CEO Carlos Tavares has announced that the group is ready to close car brands that do not make money.
Stellantis is not a charity. Money has to be made, and this puts several of the world's fourth-largest car group's brands at risk.
The managing director, Carlos Tavares, has announced that Stellantis is ready to close the brands that do not make money.
The announcement came in connection with Stellantis presenting the annual accounts for 2023. Here it is clear that the car group missed several of its earnings targets for the year.
Reuters writes that.
READ ALSO: Married couple shocked – "Flying fish crushed our Tesla"
– We can't afford brands that don't make money, said Tavares succinctly.
Thus, the chief executive has been turned on a plate. As recently as 2021, he announced that all 14 Stellantis brands had a future in the group and that none of them were otherwise for sale.
It is Maserati in particular that analysts predict Stellantis would like to sell. The brand came out of the first half of 2024 with a loss of 82 million euros. This corresponds to just under 612 million Danish kroner.
The same analysts also believe that Stellantis is considering completely closing both Citroën's sub-brand DS and Lancia, as these only generate minimal profits.
The Stellantis group itself came out of the first six months of 2024 with a profit of 5.6 billion euros, corresponding to just under 42 billion kroner.
It both is and sounds like a lot of money. But it is actually a decrease of almost 50 percent compared to the same period in 2023. At the same time, analysts had expected Stellantis to present 7 billion euros in profit for the first half of 2024.
Carlos Tavares then also calls the accounts both a disappointment and a humiliation. If he ends up closing DS and Lancia, he will close one brand in particular, which Stellantis is otherwise digging out of oblivion.
Fortunately, the first new Lancia in many years is not coming to Denmark at all, but it is. However, there is no question of any Lancia. In fact, the car is built on a Peugeot platform. Read more about it here .
As to what will happen to Maserati, it is probably only Stellantis who has a real idea. But one option is to ask the previous owners at Ferrari if they want to buy.
In 1997, Ferrari took over fifty percent of Maserati from Fiat (which actually owned Ferrari, ed.). Less than 10 years later, however, Maserati was sold off again and merged with Alfa Romeo. Ferrari broke out of the grip of the Fiat group in 2016.
Read more exciting news from and about the world of cars right here
