Disgraced Former Stellantis CEO Admits Defeat

Carlos Taveres, the disgraced former CEO of Stellantis, isn’t known for being very humble, yet he recently admitted defeat. At least he kind of did in a recent interview with Bloomberg. But we really wonder if the guy has learned his lesson or isn’t just as delusional as ever.

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In case you forgot, after Tavares was unceremoniously pushed out of the giant automaker, it came out he was solely responsible for the elimination of the Hemi V8. That’s right, the guy is the one who took away the Dodge Hellcat, Ram TRX, and so many other cool cars.

He also pushed EVs on the Mopar brands, resulting in an “electric muscle car” from Dodge, the Charger Daytona, which nobody wants and is riddled with problems. Electric Jeeps are also coming in force, all because Tavares thought he knew better than American consumers.

Imagine that, a European talking down to Americans – we’ve never before witnessed such a thing.

Speaking with Bloomberg, Tavares did accept responsibility for his blunders, kind of. “Many things could have been done differently,” he said when talking about American dealerships pushing back on his agendas.

The thing is if you notice he’s using passive voice there. In other words, he’s still not totally owning the problem, like if he were to say, “I should have done things differently.” And he’s not admitting that his agenda was dumb, just that he didn’t do the job of condescendingly explaining to dealers and consumers in the US why he was right.

This, in our opinion, is why the Mopar brands should be under American leadership. With few exceptions, and we’re not sure any are automotive executives, Europeans quite simply don’t get what American consumers value.

That’s okay, they don’t have to, except when they’re running a multinational corporation that’s selling vehicles in the US. Tavares has done tremendous damage to Dodge, Chrysler, Ram, and Jeep through his pure hubris approach to leadership and marketing.

Telling the consumer what they want, something other big corporations admittedly were guilty of doing in recent years, has got to stop. With the Hemi V8 coming back, we’re seeing Stellantis give consumers what they want. Everyone else in the industry should be taking notes.

Image via Stellantis