Stellantis bails on bringing Peugeot to US, will focus on Chrysler, report says
The plan to being Peugeot back to America was announced back in 2016 and still in place as late as last summer.
This French hatch will remain forbidden fruit, for the time being.
Way back in 2016, then-PSA Groupe head Carlos Tavares said that he wanted to bring Peugeot back to US shores within 10 years. Car nerds across the US were thrilled because Peugeot makes some pretty awesome, affordable cars of the hot hatch variety -- the 208 and 308 GTi being examples.
Unfortunately, according to a report published by Car & Driver on Wednesday, now-Stellantis boss Tavares says that our French car dreams were for naught. Specifically, he said that this wasn't the time period to focus on Peugeot coming to the US, and instead, Stellantis will be pumping its time and money into reviving Chrysler.
Now, that makes sense. Chrysler is already in the US and already has brand recognition, and currently only offers three (well, two and a half, really) models -- the excellent Pacifica minivan and the cheaper but very similar Voyager minivan as well as the 300 sedan. It's going to be a lot cheaper to inject new life into Chrysler than build out a new dealer network and educate Americans on Peugeot (which hasn't been sold here since 1991).
This change of heart is relatively new, though, because PSA North America boss Larry Dominique was saying as recently as last summer that we'd get Peugeot here in just three years -- three years earlier than Tavares' original target. In an interview from August of 2020, Dominique stated that PSA NA was very interested in the compact and midsize car segments.
While the decision to move away from bringing French cars back to the US is a bummer, things do tend to change pretty quickly in the automotive industry, so while the dream is definitely delayed, it's still not entirely dead.
We reached out to Stellantis for comment but didn't hear back in time for publication.
