I am a Stellantis dealer. The mood you're describing is accurate. Filosa is more likeable than Tavares and the product lineup is actually improving on paper but 25% growth in this market is a number that exists to set a target, not because anyone seriously thinks it's achievable. We're just hoping for something closer to flat and calling it a win.

The 25% target is worth understanding as a management communication tool rather than an operational forecast. When a new leadership team inherits a situation this damaged they have two options. They can set a realistic number that signals managed decline and watch their best dealers start shopping their points, or they can set an aspirational number that signals genuine recovery ambition and hope the dealer body stays engaged long enough to see whether the product pipeline can deliver. Filosa chose the second path and it is probably the right call given the alternative. Nobody is actually being held accountable to 25% in a market that is projecting down. The number exists to prevent the conversation from being about survival and reframe it around growth. Whether that works depends entirely on whether the Ram 1500 refresh and the Jeep product cadence actually land the way they need to in the back half of the year.

Stellantis reported Q1 net profit of $443 million on April 30. Looks like recovery momentum. The detail buried in the filing is that the profitability was largely driven by a credit for refund of Trump tariffs rather than operational performance. Strip out that one-time item and the underlying picture is weaker pricing, higher costs, and inventory adjustments. CEO Filosa simultaneously announced the Value Creation Program, described as an ambitious global cost-cutting initiative focused on North America and Europe. No specifics yet. From a vendor and supplier standpoint, a global cost-cutting program without specifics is the moment to start stress-testing your Stellantis contract exposure. The VCP language is vague by design. Specifics come later, usually in the form of renegotiation requests or decommit notices. If Stellantis is a meaningful part of your book and you have not already modeled what a 10 to 20 percent volume reduction looks like in your P&L, now is the time to do that.

Filosa stood in Auburn Hills and said it all begins with product. He is right. The problem is Stellantis has been product-starved in North America for three years while dealers lost customers to brands that were actually launching things. The plan targets 60 new vehicles and major refreshes of 50 models by 2030, including 29 battery-electric vehicles, 15 plug-in hybrids, and 24 hybrids, which is an aggressive cadence for a company that just took billions in warranty charges because quality fell apart under the previous regime. The North American goal is 8 to 10 percent profit margin and 60 percent of the company's profit increase coming from this region by 2030. That is a lot of weight to put on a market where Jeep lost serious ground and Ram is carrying most of the load. The dealers who were ready to walk a year ago are going to give this a careful read. The ones who stay skeptical are not wrong to be skeptical. Stellantis has announced transformation plans before. The difference this time is that Filosa is actually shipping product. The HEMI is back in the Ram 1500. The Cherokee is coming back. Nine of the new North American vehicles are priced under $40,000, which addresses the affordability complaint dealers have been making for two years. Execution is everything here. The plan is credible enough to watch.

The FaSTLane 2030 investor day was a week ago. Sixty billion euros, 60 new models, 25 percent North American revenue growth. They have been saying some version of this for three years. The dealer council letter calling leadership a disaster came out while Tavares was still in charge and nothing changed until the board finally moved. Filosa is better. The HEMI is back. The Cherokee is coming back. Nine vehicles under $40,000. Fine. But "no more excuses" from a company that forced overpriced inventory onto its network for two consecutive years and watched share fall from 12.5 to 8 percent is not a message, it is a deflection. The dealers did not create that inventory problem. They absorbed it. That distinction matters and Stellantis has not acknowledged it once.