It's the reading glasses. If you find Olivier Francois at an auto show, his black suit, open white shirt with no necktie, and especially his reading glasses will make you think "car designer."
Francois speaks about his two fallen brands, Chrysler and Lancia, more like a creative director than brand manager. That sort of personality chooses reading glasses with magnets attaching the lens frames at the bridge.To read, the president and chief executive officer of the Chrysler Brand, Chrysler LLC and of the Lancia Brand, Fiat Group Automobiles snatches up the two halves of his glasses, secured around his neck with a lanyard, and snaps them together.
It's a telling detail, like Francois' viral Super Bowl XLV commercial for the Chrysler 200, starring Eminem. The one in which the voiceover begins with "What does this city know about luxury?" and gives way to the electric guitar riff leading into Eminem's "Lose Yourself."
"What I found out is that, behind Eminem's music, the instrumental is extremely sophisticated and beautiful," Francois says. (This is a guy who has worked in sales and marketing his entire career, having left Citroën for Fiat in 2005.) "I mean, this combination of a D minor, which is the harmony of the song," with the guitar accentuating the B flat. "It created an incredible mood. It's very simple, but very well-written."
Sounds like a designer, no?
Why, every enthusiast wants to know, isn't Eminem driving a cool new 300 in the commercial? For one, the Chrysler 200 is assembled in metro Detroit, while the 300 is built in Canada. The commercial, which has virally rebuilt Chrysler's and Detroit's image, had to advertise something; 120 seconds of Super Bowl telecast is costly, and the 200, not the 300, was just launching.
"The agency came with, first, a great line, which is 'Imported from Detroit.' The way it summarized all this vision I have for the brand, which I explained in Detroit," Francois says.
At the North American International Auto Show a few weeks earlier before the Super Bowl, Francois introduced the 2012 Chrysler 300 in his thick French accent, to the same instrumental strains from "Lose Yourself." "Imported from Detroit" also resonates for Lancia because, from now on, all Chryslers have to be conceived and engineered "by necessity for Europe," Francois says. It's a part of the globe where the American automaker has been all but absent for 40 years. At the Geneva Auto Salon, Lancia introduced its new Voyager (Town & Country), Flavia/Flavia Cabrio (200), and Thema (300), the last of which doesn't go on sale until this fall. Little more than badging and diesel engine options distinguish them from the Chryslers. In the United Kingdom, they will be Chryslers, including the B-segment Ypsilon.
The Thema becomes the first front-engine, rear-drive Lancia since the 1957-70 Flaminia. "Lancia has had successful "D" and "E" vehicles in the past, and now, thanks to Chrysler, can again," Francois says. It was at the 300's Detroit introduction (search "Chrysler at the 2011 NAIAS" on YouTube) where Francois outlined the task he has undertaken in rebuilding the brand.
"This vision is about the relationship between Detroit and Chrysler, two comeback stories-what Detroit stands for, what Chrysler stands for. So you have all those components, elements. And by the way, in the speech, I use 90 percent of the phrases that are used in the commercial. So the agency came with this extremely brilliant summary of the 23-minute one, 'Imported from Detroit.' You don't need to cross an ocean to get what you can have from these shores: quality, fun to drive, and fuel efficiency."
That's less a vision of what Chrysler is than what Francois wants it to become. It may apply to the new, rear-drive 300. The minivan remains successful in a segment it helped create. But the 200 is more a stopgap improvement of one of the worst cars to come from anywhere in the last decade, the Chrysler Sebring.
"I'm very proud of the changes we've been able to make to the new Chrysler 200," he says. "And we did that in about just one year. Having said that, any all-new D-segment car from the Chrysler Brand going forward will benefit from the Fiat partnership, and it will be a terrific architecture. We think that is a great place to start."
He's confident his product mix, under CEO Sergio Marchionne's five-year plan, won't confuse Chryslers with Dodges and even Jeeps in the shared U.S. showrooms, even as most future front-drive models use Fiat's platforms. Marchionne has said one of the minivans will switch to a European-size Fiat platform. That's probably the Dodge, with Chrysler maintaining its traditional Town & Country.
A compact Chrysler, no doubt the next Lancia Delta, arrives in calendar 2013. A 200 replacement is scheduled on a midsize Fiat platform and a crossover based on it is due in 2014, which is the same year as the launch of a Fiat-based Chrysler B-car, a model whose future is murky.
Meanwhile, Francois plans to shore up the high end of the Chrysler lineup with 300s that are even more distinctive from the Dodge Charger.
"We are currently experimenting with different, even higher levels of the new 300. We have been exhibiting concepts on the auto show circuit, including one we refer to as the S model, with black chrome. And we've shown an 'Executive' edition variant that includes an even higher-level interior."
Francois also promises the kind of handling and "fun-to-drive" component Europeans expect of Lancias, and mechanical prowess that includes a coming dual dry clutch transmission for the 200 (when Chrysler replaces its base 2.4-liter four with a smaller, more state-of-the-art Fiat engine, a nine-speed automatic is expected for front-drive V-6 models some time in the future) and an eight-speed automatic for the 300.
Francois emphasizes Chrysler and Lancia quality as a top selling point, so there's his promise that Chrysler quality under Fiat will be far better than under Daimler and Cerberus, where it has been one of the five poorest-performing brands in most J.D. Power & Associates surveys in the last decade. Any Fiat improvements are just reaching showrooms, with much-improved fit and finish and materials in the facelifted Town & Country and 200, and new 300.
The new Chryslers will be high tech, though appropriate for the specific model. "On the 300, technology will be more on the connectivity; on the luxury, no? Then if you have these three things [quality, fun-to-drive, and technology], you have a premium car." |