Elon Musk, Jim Ratcliffe and Carlos Tavares have much in common. Lately, they’ve all bitten off more than they can chew. Each is guilty of taking their eye off the ball. Consequently, their automotive brands have suffered – for very different reasons.
Tavares finds himself out of a job after his controversial stint as Stellantis CEO came to an abrupt end last month. Sure, the 66-year old will miss his reported annual salary of around 40m Euros (£34m). But his ‘leaving bonus’ of almost 100m Euros (£84m)should ensure that he’ll be able to keep the central heating on this winter. Has the not-so-poor bloke left the 14 Stellantis brands in great shape? Hardly.
One of his final actions on the Vauxhall front was to announce the potential closure of its van plant at Luton, killing off countless jobs in the process. On the car side, the British brand’s registrations on home soil plummeted by more than 21 per cent (2024 vs 2023); for decades it was the seemingly immovable No.2 (after Ford) in the Brit sales league. But with Tavares ultimately in charge of it, Vauxhall dropped out of the Top 10. Introducing stupidly high list prices for humble models such as electric Corsas, then having to slash them, damaged Carlos and more importantly, Vauxhall.
Another Stellantis brand, Maserati, registered only 28 cars in Britain last month, giving itself a miserable 0.02 per cent share of the market. Sister firm DS went one worse with a total of only 27 sales, which represents a 65 per cent drop (comparing December 2024 with Dec ’23). Abarth sales plummeted 73 per cent as the company found just 18 buyers, giving the firm a woeful 0.01 per cent slice of the pie.
