Stellantis has set up nearly 50 specialized quality war rooms across its plants, and CEO Antonio Filosa says the purpose is to fix known defects before they reach customers instead of after a recall. He described the push at the Automotive News Congress in Detroit on September 30, alongside a staffing figure: more than 2,000 engineers added in 2025 to bolster quality controls and oversight.
The timing carries weight. Stellantis shares touched a record low of 3.90 euros on the Milan exchange on the same day, down nearly 60% for the year, and the automaker has had a run of recalls and launch problems across Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler to answer for.
Staffing and structure of the war rooms
Each room pulls design engineers, plant workers, quality specialists and supplier engineers into one place to work a specific component defect, Autoblog reported. The format is meant to give engineers a direct path to root causes, bypassing the usual handoffs between engineering and manufacturing chains, according to Automotive Addicts, which adds that the rooms serve a portfolio that includes Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Maserati, Peugeot, Citroen and Opel.
Filosa described the pace as “very, very, very quickly” in remarks quoted by autoevolution, which lists the targets as hardware faults such as premature casting fatigue in chassis components, software faults in battery management modules and touchscreens that freeze, and panel gaps on the assembly line. Software is the main battleground, Automotive Addicts wrote, since infotainment, digital clusters and driver-assistance systems all depend on it.
The defects the rooms were built to answer
Four problems anchor the list Autoblog assembled. The Dodge Charger Daytona electric car launched in early 2025 with software the company has acknowledged was subpar. Jeep Grand Cherokee side airbags deployed later than intended in impact testing. Dodge Durango rear spoilers have detached. Camera software glitches have also drawn recalls across Jeep, Dodge, Ram and Chrysler, Autoblog noted. And the largest by far is the Ram 1500 seat belt anchor recall.
That recall covers 1,271,294 trucks from model years 2019 through 2026, built between February 17, 2018, and April 27, 2026, according to Fox Business, which puts the number a little under the “over 1.3 million” in Autoblog’s account. NHTSA’s wording is that reduced load management by the seat belt buckle may result in injury. Chrysler estimates only about 0.1% of the trucks carry the defect.
The paper trail shows how slowly a plant-floor problem can surface. Wards Auto’s account of the filing, campaign 26V495000, says the issue was first reported in Canada on January 20, 2026. The company’s American arm opened an investigation on February 26 and approved the recall on July 23, and owner letters began going out on August 18. The cause is assembly: second-row driver-side or center anchors that were not torqued to specification, with no faulty part involved. A fault of that kind is exactly what a room full of plant workers and supplier engineers is positioned to catch on the line.
Cost program and quality targets
Quality sits beside a savings program. Stellantis has about 3,000 engineers working on its Value Creation Program, which aims for $7 billion in structural savings by 2028, and Autoblog flagged the potential tension between that effort and the quality push. The 2,000 engineers added in 2025 were hired mainly to support quality and faster product development in North America, according to Automotive Addicts.
On the goal, the trade reports agree: Filosa wants every vehicle segment in the top quartile for overall quality by 2028. At the company’s investor day he said “product quality has already improved globally by 31%,” and that management aims to “reach top quartile performance in every segment and every region” by 2030, as the investor-day transcript records. The two target years differ by two.
Outside measures were less generous. Milano Finanza noted that recent J.D. Power quality surveys placed Jeep and Ram below industry averages. Filosa told the Detroit audience the company remains “fully committed and convinced” of reaching its 2026 goals, with mid-single-digit revenue growth and low-single-digit operating margins projected.
The same Milano Finanza report says Filosa confirmed that all 14 brands stay in the portfolio, with a strategy built on stricter brand management, enhanced partnerships, production optimization and customer choice on powertrains. The war rooms therefore operate inside a company that is not shrinking its brand list while it tries to repair its reputation for build quality.
Autoevolution reports that improved 2028 and 2029 model-year vehicles are the ones Stellantis expects to carry more stable software and refined hardware, which places the first cars built under the war-room regime a couple of years out and leaves the first-quartile claim unverified until then.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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