Stellantis is still throwing money at engine building, invests $99 million

Stellantis, a company whose name is still mystifyingly vague, is pumping 99 million dollars (no, not 100 million... are you mad?) into building new engines in North America, splitting production and funds across facilities in Michigan, Toronto, and Kokomo. We’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it sloooow... ah, dang it. Knew that’d happen.

Well, St. Anger says they’re new, but that might be more in sense that when you buy a second-hand car, it’s your new car. Anyways, Hey, Stellaaaah! says the ‘new’ engine is based on a “current Stellantis production engine in Europe”, which likely means it’s the ‘Prince’ (i.e. the PSA engine co-developed with BMW) that you find in a Peugeot, Citroen, DS, older BMW Mini and so on.

And considering that Fiat-Chrysler’s ‘Tigershark’ engine was a perfect case of all mouth and no trousers, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it’ll be the first on the chopping block. For some hearty fin soup, if you wanted to torture the metaphor. And we do, but that’s likely enough for now.

By now, you might be wondering why anyone would spend real money on building engines in a time when they’re expensive to run, in legislative crosshairs and outperformed by pretty much any EV you could name. And that last one’s your hint – it’ll underpin the raft of hybrids that Still Crazy After All These Years is preparing to build in America from the start of 2025. And to be honest, you kind of already knew that’d happen.