Fiat is poised for a major renewal as part of the wider Stellantis Group. The company will make a decisive move to strengthen its range when it brings a new family-sized Fiat Tipo to market in 2025.
Considered by many to be a sleeping giant, the Italian brand has struggled over the past 15 years to justify the investment required to keep its small car lineup up to date. Models, including the reborn Punto and simplified Panda, have already been designed and anchored in well over 500 product plans.
Now Fiat boss Olivier François has overhauled tipos to rival the Focus and Golf as part of the brand’s role within Stellantis (which also includes mainstream manufacturers such as Vauxhall, Citroën and Peugeot). I confirmed that I was planning to
“What I love about Fiat is that we have only two missions: urban mobility and affordable family transportation,” said François. “The second is room, room, room, space for money, devices to simplify life while using the car for the whole family.
“This is the C segment [family hatchback] We’ll see it in 2025. We’ll have to replace the Tipo. Don’t torture me about body style. But now, like everyone else, it’s trying to transcend traditional segmentation—a little SUV-y, but in a revolutionary way. “
Our exclusive images reinterpret the Tipo as a family-sized crossover, taking cues from recent Fiat sales outside of Europe. There is a need to appeal to customers in the traditional family hatchback market from Turkey to Latin America, as well as Italy, Germany, France and the UK. It also replaces the traditional three body styles of hatchback, sedan and estate. is needed.
“There’s no way Fiat will be profitable on a regular basis. It’s profitable now, but our plan is to become more and more profitable if we don’t consolidate our European and South American line-up,” said François. rice field. “Cars to be launched in 2023 [expected to be a 500X EV] It’s been around for a long time, so it’s still Europe. [Stellantis]. It takes time to converge.
“But we’ll start in 2024, 2025, 2026. This is my vision of cars that are frozen in design and so on, and we’re going to have a single line-up. Electric in one region, electric in another. Regions can use internal combustion engines, but with minor differences, they can make a lot of products on the same basis.”
The powertrain’s twin-track approach opens up a world of platform possibilities. A 2025 arrival date puts the Tipo at the end of the life of the CMP/e-CMP architecture that underpins everything from the Peugeot 208 to the Citroen C4, but it’s also the starting point for the all-electric STLA small platform. effectively replace it.
The two architectures share many parts, so it’s possible that both could be used, but the most likely scenario is that Fiat will stick with CMP in both Europe and Latin America. This allows us to leverage a fully depreciated cost base that will continue to support many of our hot selling models well into the second half of the decade. The company also has its own Latin American-focused platform called MLA, but it’s used because it’s basically based on much older machines developed at General Motors rather than Stellantis’s. is unlikely to occur.
François suggested that most European customers might actually be offered the next Tipo as an EV only, but hinted at flexibility on the matter.What we offer is launching all new models as electric only [in Europe] From 2024. It’s possible thanks to Stellantis and technology sharing. We need to follow the market and listen to our customers, but battery costs are not going down as much as we would like.
“We’re ready if the technology and infrastructure allow, but we have the same car in two regions, one of which is not electric, so it’s great to have time to pull the trigger.” but also have pragmatism. “
The current Tipo was launched in 2015. Sales in Europe he peaked in 2016 with over 125,000 units, but that number has fallen by just over a quarter. It is currently built at the Bursa plant in Turkey, but there is considerable excess capacity after Stellantis moved many of its commercial vehicles, including the Vauxhall Combo and Fiat Dobro, to its Vigo plant in Spain.
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