With Dodge now claiming the exclusive rights to the SRT badge we knew Jeep wouldn't be keen to cut its largest margin maker, so they renamed it instead.
Car and Driver via Allpar told us way back in October that FCA had trademarked Trackhawk, instantly alarm bells went off. The Hellcat had just debuted and was replacing the old 6.4 HEMI as top dog, it couldn't be long before Jeep followed suit.
So just what is Jeep up to? Well making money namely. Some people are wondering just who is going to have the appetite to swallow an $80,000+ Jeep, I know exactly who. They drive Range Rovers and already cross shop the Grand Cherokee quite seriously. Mike Manley knows this intimately "Some of that competition has not been so evident because either we’ve been through product portfolio changes or they have been through product portfolio changes. But they are the only other pure SUV brand in the world so they will always be competition."
But its not just Range Rovers that are cross shopped, Manley also noted that the top trim Grand Cherokee Summit is cross shopped with the BMW X5 as well.
But lets take this one further because we're talking Trackhawk here. Remember the Range Rover SVR -the bonkers sporty model with a supercharged V8- that JLR debuted last year, to the tune of $111,400? Well turns out the largest market for that truck has been NYC which indicates to me that RR is hitting the sweet spot in the Upper East Side. JLR says they've moved about 1,600 SVR's to date , for those of you keeping score at home that's $178,240,000 in generated revenue, you don't think FCA and their bleeding balance sheet want a piece of that pie?
Don't believe me? Fine, just ask Sergio Marchionne what he thinks. “When I see a Range Rover on the street, my blood boils, because we should be able to do a thing like that and we will.”
