I’ve had heated debates, by the way, inside the house about whether we should have a removable door or not have a removable door on the Wrangler; whether we should be able to knock down the windshield in the Wrangler or not knock it down. I don’t know how many people who own Wranglers have ever done that. I know I’ve never done it on mine, but I’ve been told there are a number of people that actually do that to the vehicle so we can’t remove any of those attributes on the Wrangler, and yet we’ve got to be able to do two things.
One, bring about a substantial light weighting of the vehicle because we’ve got to take some weight out. And secondly, we’ve got to improve its powertrain capabilities so it can do a variety of things with the rest of the powertrain story that we have within the Fiat/Chrysler world. And in the process, I think we’ll update design and style, but without touching the fundamental elements of the Wrangler. You’ve got to be very, very careful. You can update it, but you can’t change it. If you take the nature of the Wrangler out, you’ll kill it.
So that work is well under way. We’re going to make probably the final decision on this within the first quarter of this year and implementation is less than 24 months away. So I feel relatively comfortable that we’ve found sort of the solution to the puzzle.
The biggest issue that we have with the Wrangler, as you well know, is capacity limitations. We can’t make enough. I’ve also made it clear that I think the response that we’ve had from the workforce of the Wrangler plant has been nothing less than phenomenal. These people have worked around the clock. They’ve done incredible things to try to get us all the Wranglers we need.
We’re still looking for ways to increase the output of that plant because one of the commitments we’ve made is never to produce a Wrangler outside of Toledo. So whatever Wranglers are going to be made are going to be made there as long as I’m the CEO. They’ll not be built anywhere else. So I don’t know whether it gives you all the comfort you need on the Wrangler.
