TORONTO — Peugeot could peddle a pickup in North America after its parent company's proposed merger with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles closes, PSA North America CEO Larry Dominique suggested.
Onstage at the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association Summit here, CADA CEO Tim Reuss asked Dominique what kind of products dealers can expect from Peugeot in the region.
PSA will focus on the compact and midsize car segments, Dominique said. He acknowledged that Peugeot lacks a pickup to bring to the truck-heavy market, but he suggested the proposed PSA-FCA merger could change that in the long term.
"I don't have a pickup truck, at least until we're married to FCA. Then I might have a pickup truck," he said at the event last week. "But initially, I don't have a pickup truck, so the C- and D-segments are critical to us. That's where we're going to be concentrating our efforts."
The PSA-FCA tie-up is expected to close by 2021, pending regulatory approvals. It would create the world's fourth-largest automaker by volume. The merger would bring PSA's lineup of smaller cars and crossovers under the same corporate umbrella as FCA's larger Jeep utilities and Ram pickups.
Dominique was largely tight-lipped on what the merger could mean for plans to return the Peugeot brand to North America by 2026.
He said, however, that the brand was unlikely to offer subcompact vehicles in the market.
"On the Canadian side, I get asked a lot about the higher penetration of B-segment vehicles in Quebec in particular," he said. "We have great B-segment vehicles in Europe, but our current plan right now is not yet to homologate that platform."
