Belvedere better start putting coal in the boilers... Make it STLA Large Plant.....Dakota, Durago, Minivan, Chrysler cuv, and Charger can all be built there.
Mexico will blink STLA mids can come from there,
Windsor and Brampton can build for their own market similar to Winsor can make Canadian versions of everything including Jeeps.
Proud of Canada for wanting to be independent, good on them. Full support.
I too was thinking about how they could shift production, and setting up Belvidere for Charger, Pacifica, and Dakota seems like the most obvious move.
They clearly need to move the vehicles intended primarily/solely for the US market to US plants. The other vehicles, besides Charger and Pacifica, that may need a new home are the upcoming Cherokee and Compass, as they are not intended to be exported significantly. (Cherokee is supposedly for North America exclusively, and Compass, while sold worldwide, is produced locally for international markets in Italy, Brazil, and India.)
Some other ideas I brainstormed:
*Produce Ram 1500s and HDs for export in Saltillo and added domestic-market HDs to Sterling Heights and/or Warren.
*With Grand Cherokee no longer being exported to Europe or Australia (or anywhere?), could GC and Durango production be reconsolidated at Jefferson North? This would allow the Mack plant to be retooled for something else, such as STLA Medium for the new Compass and a new Hornet. If there are still going to be GC exports, could those be built at Toluca with the Recon and Wagoneer S?
*With sales down and likely to decrease further due to tariffs, could Gladiator and Wrangler production be consolidated at Toledo South? This would allow Toledo North to be retooled for something else, such as the new Cherokee and domestic market Recon and Wagoneer S. (If capacity is constrained at Toledo South, they could consider discontinuing the two-door Wrangler. How many of those do they sell anyway?) Another solution could be to build Wranglers and Gladiators for export at Brampton.
*How flexible is Warren? Could the unit-body ProMaster van (for US sales, export models would continue to be built at Saltillo Van) be built there along with the body-on-frame Wagoneer and possibly the Ram HDs?
*I'm assuming that the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer are exported in small enough numbers and for a high-enough margin that they could absorb the costs of the inevitable retaliatory tariffs and continue all production at Warren.
It's a shame the OEMs were not given a year or two to sort this out and get production shifts and retooling underway before the tariffs struck. One good thing is that Stellantis has two assembly plants sitting idle (Brampton and Belvidere), which gives them a little flexibility. If they survive the bloodbath that is about to take place in the auto market and are able to make production shifts, it's obviously going to take a lot of time and money, and they need to figure out what their suppliers are going to do and reconfigure supply chains. Shifting to building the same vehicle in two different plants (for example, Pacifica being built at both Windsor and Belvedere) also adds another layer of complexity to the supply chain.
Another question: volume capacity aside, are the assembly plants flexible enough to produce lower volumes of several models? For example, could Belvidere and Windsor each produce Pacificas, Voyagers, Chargers, Dakotas, Chrysler CUVs, and Chrysler sedans?