FCA's future small cars will ride on a PSA platform
The first engineering pieces of the FCA-PSA puzzle to create Stellantis fall into place.
Future small cars from Fiat Chrysler Automobile's house of brands will ride on PSA Group architecture. According to an Automotive News report on Friday, FCA's future small cars will use the French automaker's Common Modular Platform (CMP underpins the new Peugeot 208) as the two march toward a full-out merger. The combined company will be known as Stellantis when the corporate and legal dust settles.
The report cited a letter FCA sent to suppliers asking them to halt any research and development for small and subcompact vehicle models. (Vehicles such as the Jeep Renegade and latest Fiat 500 fall into this specific category, for some context.) Automotive News reported FCA had already retooled its small-car architecture to fit other powertrains such as electric motors and batteries, and the new 500 was the first to take advantage of the platform. More than likely, the 500 will be the only car to use the updated architecture.
An FCA spokesperson confirmed the platform sharing and clarified this move comes "separately from any merger negotiation." They added, "Due to confidentiality and obvious competitiveness reasons, at this stage we will not detail more" at this time.
Additional platform sharing is all but guaranteed when FCA and PSA officially become Stellantis. The ultimate goal of the merger is to create a leaner operation through common engineering and increased synergies. It will also likely be quite a boon to PSA as it prepares to relaunch the Peugeot brand in the US soon.
Ultimately, it's not clear if this specific platform sharing will have massive impacts in the US. FCA doesn't sell many small cars stateside as trucks and SUVs become the norm. The most recent small car FCA sold in the US was the Dodge Dart, which exited production along with the Chrysler 200 sedan.
