- Dodge’s Grand Caravan minivan and Journey crossover will not live past the 2020 model year, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has announced.
- The move is part of a plan to focus on “core performance” cars, meaning the Challenger and Charger, as well as the Durango mid-size SUV.
- Together, the Journey and Grand Caravan made up almost half of Dodge’s 2019 U.S. sales, so this is a leap of faith for the FCA brand.
Last week, Dodge added the Dodge Challenger SRT Super Stock, Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye and Durango Hellcat to its stable. At almost the same time, news has come that Dodge is killing the Journey crossover along with the Grand Caravan minivan. Those two vehicles accounted for 47 percent of Dodge’s 2019 U.S. sales and helped it become the first domestic brand to top J.D. Power’s initial-quality survey. But next year Dodge is going to sell just the Challenger, Charger, and Durango.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles passenger-car boss Tim Kuniskis says the company has for years wanted Dodge cut to just its “core performance” vehicles. But every time cutting the Journey and Caravan came up, the sales were too strong to pull the trigger, so the company kept postponing the guillotine.
The Caravan (and Plymouth Voyager) were launched in 1983, basically inventing the minivan segment. The Grand Caravan was last redesigned in 2007. Even though sales were down 19 percent last year, it was still the top-selling minivan in the U.S., while the Journey was 13th in the ultracompetitive compact-crossover wars.
To refresh your memory on the new SRT vehicles for 2021, the new Durango Hellcat has a revised front end and a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 producing 710 hp and 645 lb-ft. The crossover is only available for 2021 due to new emissions regulations coming for model year 2022. So no more than 2000 Durango Hellcats will be built. Act fast. The rear-drive Charger Hellcat Redeye boasts 797 horsepower and 707 lb-ft, while the Challenger SRT Super Stock is the most powerful model coming in 2021, with a whopping 807 horsepower.
In other Hellcat news, the Ram TRX has been teased online and is expected on sale later this year. The concept debuted in 2016 at the State Fair of Texas and FCA confirmed production a couple of years ago. The production truck is expected to get a 700-plus-hp Hellcat V-8 under the hood. A source told Autoweek that FCA expects to be able to sell about 20,000 TRXs a year.
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Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
