Missing Mopars of 2024

Hi it's me Dave again and I'm animated again to talk about the missing Mopars

And I did a story like this back in 2013 for Allpar. I think I did more than one

So two things that we don't expect to see right now so they're not really

missing are the 2026 Dodge Durango, which many think will be a lower cost version

of the Wagoneer. Strip out the luxury, put in some extra trailer towing, boom

you've got a Durango. Now the other one is the Dodge Dakota pickup truck

regardless of what they might call it. And that's expected to arrive at the

Belvedere plant in 2026-2027, which is quite a distance away. Which is quite a

distance away and one can't help but think that they had not yet started to

engineer it until they made the deal with the union. Now let's talk about some

other things. The Dodge Charger. It should be in production now. It obviously isn't

People at Mopar Insiders claim that there was a three month delay on that

car which seems likely as a minimum. And the Wagoneer S was also due to start

production in Mexico by now. Charger is being made in Canada at the

minivan factory and Wagoneer S is being made in Mexico. They make the

Compass now and they're supposed to start on STOA large platform Wagoneer S

and Jeep Recon. Since that hasn't started up yet I'm guessing that they're having

an issue with either the electric drive module or the battery pack or the

software. So the delay on the Wagoneer S would seem to add some credibility to

blaming the electric part of the charger rather than saying that the

hybrid charger is the one that's delayed. Now for those of you who are going to

whine about there not being a gasoline version of the Jeep Wagoneer S, there

actually is. It's called the Jeep Cherokee. They share a body code which is

I assume means that they share a body. It was never actually officially announced

but it's been on a lot of company paperwork. It's probably not due yet

anyway so it's hard to tell whether it's late or just hasn't shown up because it

hasn't shown up because it's not supposed to show up. So that brings us back to the Jeep Recon and that's an all-electric version of the Jeep Wrangler

It's also bigger. It's a completely different body. It's on STOA large as

opposed to STOA frame like the Wrangler. It seems to have been pushed off the

2024 schedule and we haven't heard about it lately. Some say it's being

delayed to have a gasoline engine fitted. That seems like a silly idea because why

wouldn't they just make the electric one first? And you know all this stuff about

Stellantis not making the electric cars because people stopped buying them forgets two things. One, we have had electric car growth stop for literally

one quarter and that's it and it's quite possible that some of that is because

people are looking at the number one electric car maker Tesla which has

really borne the brunt of the sales drop and they're saying you I don't think I

want to buy from this man anymore he's a little loopy. Anyway we're not going to

talk about Elon Musk this is not the time. So the reason why Stellantis needs

to do electric cars regardless of who else is winning and who else is losing

is because they can't meet their fuel economy goals otherwise. They're getting

a plant ready to make the 1.6 liter Peugeot engine with a turbocharger and

probably a punch powertrain hybrid system on every single one but I don't

know what vehicles that'll go into. The Jeep Compass which is one of them which

is one of what I would call missing vehicle in a way although it wasn't really expected now because they have to finish rebuilding the Brampton plant

first and the company's been very busy lately. They've been doing things like

investing in an electric VTOL aircraft company and buying half of a Chinese

electric car company and getting their cars sold in Europe more easily so they

can fulfill their fear that Chinese will undercut them in Europe and getting rid

of lots and lots of people. So the company's been kind of busy but the Jeep

Compass is coming to Canada like they said it would it's just not supposed to

be there yet so it's not really missing. Speaking of not really missing we have

the Promaster EV the electric Promaster which is some people say it's delayed

some people say it's missing but it's actually available to order now. It seems

that there are 30 of them available around the entire country at around

$89,000 each. That might seem like a lot but Promaster vans well commercial vans

are not cheap and these are meant to be delivery vans. The cargo vans come later

and if you've looked at delivery van stats and you know that even those

little post office vehicles that are really tiny they get single-digit gas

mileage and if you can avoid the single-digit gas mileage with this Ram

Promaster EV you'll probably make up that money very quickly and you also

have less maintenance so it might actually be a really good deal for

companies. Anyway then you've got Chrysler which was promised at least one

new car by 2025 and the clock is ticking on those. If an electric Chrysler is

actually very nearly ready to go though it's probably going to be delayed by

whatever is holding up the charger and let me just say here once and for all

I'd rather have these delays than a bad car. I mean what really killed Chrysler

back in the olden times? 1957 when they screwed up the launch of the their

entire product line because they were supposed to be 1958s but they rushed

them through without a whole lot of testing and without refining and they were junk and it really killed their prized reputation for good engineering

1976 they come out with the Volari has been too early and rusts all over the

place the reputation goes to pot again. 1889 the four-speed automatic well that

killed their reputation for making flawless transmissions didn't it? We do want them to delay if there's a problem but it would be nice if they would

communicate openly and clearly and consistently with us when this happens rather than making cryptic comments now and then from different people that

seem to contradict each other they might all be true but you know it's like we

shouldn't have to read the tea leaves they should just talk to us the customers maybe directly maybe send out a mailing to all the customers instead

of having things go through the news media where it always gets paraphrased

and rewritten and misinterpreted and maybe communicate with customers and employees as well as they do with stockholders and you can't help but

think a lot of their actions are just to keep the stock price up and that seems

pointless because you know Toyota doesn't really do that. Toyota they focus

on the cars the customers and the employees and the stockholders are happy

most of the time because doing that keeps the company profitable so the

important people here are the employees the customers and the dealers anyway

that's my opinion I might just be a crazy old man shouting at you to get off

my lawn but I think that it would be nice if we had some clear status on

these vehicles if the company would be up front and for God's sake nobody is gonna say oh naughty for you you had a quality thing that you foresaw things

didn't work out quite as you planned so you can't make the schedule oh we hate

you for that nobody's gonna say that well people will say is well we have to

respect this new company because it can be up front it can be honest it can come

right out and say we're making a better car for you and that's gonna cause some delays and that's just the way it is because we don't want to screw up like

we've done too often in the past sometimes honesty is the best policy and

this is Dave signing out