Stellantis Shuffles, Fiat Fun, and Catching a Rocket with Chopsticks

Kyle Mountsier  0:13  
All right, good morning. It's Monday morning, october 14, hanging out with J C Jordan, the man Cox. We're going to talk about his pods. Solanus shuffles Fiat fun and catching a rocket with chopsticks.

Unknown Speaker  0:25  
Big day. Look at that. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier  0:27  
nailed it. Got it all the way in. Good morning, Jordan,

Unknown Speaker  0:35  
good morning.

Kyle Mountsier  0:36  
Look at that. Look at that bright smile and those sunglasses on the top of your head. It's just like, it's just, you know, that warms my heart. It's like, you know what to expect. It's coming. You know,

Jordan Cox  0:46  
great way to start the day, huh? Great

Kyle Mountsier  0:47  
way to start today. Hey, tell the people, because we've released two more episodes of the in the dirt that you've been releasing from your time at Roman. Just give us a little background on those episodes and why people should check out that little mini series.

Jordan Cox  1:03  
Man, it's magical. So in that series, we've been able to have a great conversation about one really specific topic. So it's not like we're having the same conversation about the world's largest Honda store. Seven times, we literally go deep on something very specific, whether it's creating career path within within fixed ops, or whether it's talking about how a store can perform in the third largest market in the US, or even one of the ones that just released, which is creating an in house dealer, agency, you know, in house within the store. Like, what does that look like? How did that work? What did you have it was a struggle. What were some big wins? And that's just always one of my favorite things, is the curiosity side of it, because I'm so literally curious about everything is going super steep on that. But man, it's so cool to be able to share this with the world their story in seven different ways. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier  1:53  
And speaking of sharing stories, we are releasing episode four of more than cars, right? Which is on Mohawk, Chevrolet on November 13. Circle that Joker on your calendar. Head to our LinkedIn. Say you're coming spend some time with us, the whole fan, the whole crew. It's the middle of November on a Wednesday. What else you do? It? You know, lunch and watch more than cars. You know what I mean. So we're gonna be doing that. And hey, look, we're gonna be heavy in filming Season Two of more than cars this fall. So look out for that in the spring. But we will be sharing kind of our travels and what we're doing with that, where we're going to be in stores and in groups multiple times, pre production, production filming will give you the behind the scenes, the whole nine yards. Don't worry about it, everything, yeah. Speaking of the whole nine yards,

Jordan Cox  2:41  
Ooh, good one. Yikes,

Kyle Mountsier  2:43  
wow. So here we go. Antonio philoso, Jeep CEO, since last November, is also now stepping into the role of still Lance's North America COO, with a sales slump and dealer frustrations, philoso faces a challenging balancing act, no doubt, as he takes on this dual role, so he is replacing Carlos Carlos, the lenga, who was COO for just, just get this eight months. It's clear, everybody knows it that we've been talking about Carlos Tavares. But deals expectations are getting better, inventory, movement, product support and getting product delivery and pricing in line with what the market wants. Obviously, still honest, the others have been quite frustrated. There are a lot of leadership changes probably going to happen now through the first quarter of next year in the stellantis org. This is just one of them, and here's, here's the here's the very, very small but timely and accurate quote, it seems, from philoso on his LinkedIn post, he said, It's no secret that we have work to do. Great quote,

Jordan Cox  3:54  
at least CD Jr, at the corporate level, is admitting that there are things that are going wrong. I mean, we've known that on the front lines for, you know, let's say, almost two years now, not that it was horrible things, but you look at days, days on market for a lot of their models, there was so much that they were creating and putting in the pipeline, being manufactured, getting to dealers that just wasn't selling the right way. And I'm not saying that that's completely corporate fault. There's a lot of things, obviously, like supply is always a very big thing, but there have been a lot of challenges with that market. There's been a lot of challenges with the reshuffle, you know, even Chrysler, like, where does that fit in the big picture? I think we're gonna find out some more information here shortly, probably the next few months, just on what that new, bold future looks

Kyle Mountsier  4:36  
like, right? Well, and what I think is really interesting here is that, you know, if there was any brand within that stellantis Family of Brands that is doing okay is the Jeep brand, so there's potentially some hope for bringing a little bit more of that influence at the global level to the brand, and not just at the Jeep brand level. So. Uh, interesting there, um, speaking of branding,

look another stellantis brand Fiat has launched not just a playful but a little bit of a Jabby social media campaign, contrasting its small 500 EEV with the massive Tesla cyber truck, the campaign humorously highlights the size difference while promoting Fiats electric city car as a charming and practical alternative. There is a video that you can go to like click the link in our show notes. You gotta find it. It's called, You say tomato, or you say tomato, we say Pomodoro compared vehicles as a cyber truck play, portrayed as shock, while the 500 E is in such amazing fashion and like they're going after a certain market is awe, like, fucking all, like, shocking,

Unknown Speaker  6:01  
oh yeah.

Kyle Mountsier  6:04  
The Fiat, obviously, is kind of trying to position itself as an ease of use in city driving, and they're trying to inject some humor while positioning it to US customers in a different light. Interestingly enough, in July of this year, cyber truck had a little over 5000 registrations. Fiat last year, 500 Yeah, 500 the still answer. Cmo Olivier Francois said our little cinco cento, which is 500 embodies what an electric city car should be so they got some opinions. You know, at

Jordan Cox  6:43  
least they know their market fit. I mean Fiat coming from Europe, they know it's a small city car that's meant for being tiny, being kind of cute. It's always been that way, even in the US and the man a cyber truck, what's more American than a big truck, right? Telling you what still like the Fiat, it fits so well in so many markets. So if it i they're doing that, comparison is perfect. You've got the cyber truck on one side, you've got the Fiat 500 D on the other side. I mean, it just fits perfect

Kyle Mountsier  7:09  
from just like my marketer's heart, it is a dialed in campaign, right? It is like it nails the like challenger brand, the feels. They know their target audience. They're not going after something that isn't who that car is is meant for. It's not like, hey, buy a cyber or a 500 E instead of a cyber truck. It's just like, look, we want the people that want the cute, small city car we live we're going to find you. We're not working for anything else, that's what we're after. So, you know, from a peer marketer's perspective, I think it is a genius play. If you, if you have a moment, click the show notes or look up the campaign. It's ridiculous. You gotta check it out. It's speaking of ridiculous segway and definitely not small. SpaceX last week, successfully launched and caught its massive starship booster making a historic achievement in space flight. This bold maneuver showcases space X's innovation as it is working toward fully reusable rockets for Moon and Mars missions. The booster called super heavy, super creative name, was caught midair by the launch towers, chopstick arms. The obviously, they are trying to make starship fully reusable and for rapid launch capacity and relaunching as well. The the the quote by Elon, though, is, you know, as to be expected, quite ridiculous. He said it's a big step toward making life multi planetary. So he's thinking, we're going to Mars and we're living there.

Jordan Cox  8:53  
Yeah, yeah. Did you watch it live?

Kyle Mountsier  8:56  
I didn't watch it live, but I watched the video afterwards. And there's one part that, like, stood out to me, what stood out to you

Jordan Cox  9:03  
just how gracefully this huge thing, and you can't even tell scale, it looks fake, because the thing is huge, and the way it just gracefully lands and just touches down, back onto this rack style thing with these chopstick things that point out. I mean, that was, that was kind of cool. Well, what's

Kyle Mountsier  9:19  
crazy is it doesn't actually ever land. It just kind of like comes into, like this drone hover state, sits there, and then what's crazy to me is, like, if you just turn off the video or close your eyes when you're watching this thing, you would think you are watching the finals of the World Cup Argentina, Brazil, or something ridiculous. I mean, people were going bananas for a solid four or five minutes, just hoot and holler and cheering like, like someone just won the World Cup, right? Like that, like your team just won the Super Bowl on the on the last play of the of the final seconds of a drive. So, like you. What I love is this is what's so cool is anything can be a brand. Anything can be can have fanatics around it, and how it's positioned, how the marketing around it, how the communication around it, like you see the tele you know, even just if you watch the commentators on this thing and listen to the commentators. They're excited. They know the details. They know the ins and outs. And so it proves that anything can be can can have fans and fanatics around it. Yeah, that includes a dealership, that includes an automaker, that includes any of those things. It's just how you position that brand.

Jordan Cox  10:39  
And it's all coming down to getting attention. That's what they do so well. And I know there are some people that showed up expecting to see a rocket blow up, like that's what it used to be, is you would just show up and there's a 5050, chance that that rocket was not going to land. It was going to blow up back when did the Falcon nine? When they did test landings for that one, then they tried it on a barge, there were a lot of failures. But, man, they've come such a long way on getting that engineering fine tuned and making it quite a show and a showman,

Kyle Mountsier  11:09  
here's just an idea for any place that has TVs in it already. This is not just bars. This is dealerships. Dealerships. Yeah, watch out for the next one of these things. Yeah, have a launch party. There'll be people showing up left and right. Be the center of culture. Put a boat in the river and ride with it. Instead of throwing a rock in the stream, let's go right, right River. Go ride in the river. Today, it's Monday. We're kicking it off, talking about stellantis all over the place in SpaceX, blowing up rockets, but today you got to serve some people. Care for people. Love people more than cars. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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