Mike Manley legacy: Jeep's global growth, big-ticket merger

DETROIT — Mike Manley joined Chrysler a couple of years after a merger, and now he's leaving after another one.

The longtime executive is departing the company now called Stellantis with a consequential legacy built on Jeep's global surge and the tie-up with PSA Group that will lead to a largely electrified lineup.

Manley took the helm of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles just before CEO Sergio Marchionne died in July 2018 and steadily reshaped the upper ranks of the automaker, turning to industry outsiders from Amazon and Nike. He also poached rival executives such as Christian Meunier, who came from Infiniti and now heads Jeep's global operations.

Manley had an eye on securing the long-term future of the company, with much of his stint as CEO dedicated to exploring combinations with Renault — FCA pulled back on a 2019 merger proposal a little over a week later — and PSA. The openness to a merger was right out of the playbook of Marchionne, who famously argued about the need for industry consolidation.

Jim Morrison, Jeep's North American vice president, said guiding the off-road brand's ascent was Manley's crowning achievement. Jeep went from selling about 300,000 vehicles globally in 2009 to 1.5 million a decade later.

Morrison called Manley one the smartest people he knew. He remembered the day when Manley wrote down the goal of 1 million Jeep sales. Morrison wondered how that would even be possible.

The Wrangler and Grand Cherokee, Morrison said, had a ton to do with it. Early in Manley's Jeep tenure, the brand launched a redesigned Grand Cherokee and overhauled the Wrangler by revamping its interior and giving it more power with the Pentastar V-6 engine.

"He always had a really good view of today, and how to make the best out of today, with a long-term view of the future," Morrison told Automotive News. "What we always saw eye to eye on was growing the business profitably and expanding Jeep and expanding the Ram brand."

With Manley leaving to run AutoNation, the Americas region will be in the hands of North America COO Mark Stewart, the former Amazon executive he hired, and Latin America COO Antonio Filosa. They will report directly to Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares.

"Sad to see him go, but happy for everything he has given to us," said Nick Grava, marketing and sales director for Grava Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram-SRT in Medford, Mass. "Running the No. 1 new-car retail group is no small feat, but if anyone is the right guy to fill the spot, Mike is."

Manley started at the automaker in 2000, two years after Chrysler's ill-fated merger with Daimler-Benz, when it bought the British company he was working for, Lex Autosales. DaimlerChrysler brought him to the U.S. in 2003.

The success of arguably the most valuable piece of Stellantis, Jeep, can be attributed to Manley's efforts to broaden the brand's reach.

A key moment for Manley's career came in 2009, when Marchionne tasked him with reviving Jeep and turning it into an international force.

"He appreciated Sergio's vision for the global presence of FCA, particularly the strength of the Jeep brand globally, which we all know was what Sergio really wanted when he proposed and succeeded in the merger that created FCA," Karl Brauer, iSeeCars.com executive analyst, told Automotive News. "Mike was very good at receiving the baton from Sergio, so to speak, incorporating Sergio's thinking and kind of the pathways that he had mapped out for FCA. I think Mike agreed with those, he aligned with Sergio on those, and he was able to continue those when Sergio was gone."

Although Manley had retail experience, he took a hands-off approach with dealers. He left interactions at council meetings to the company's U.S. sales chief, Jeff Kommor, and Kommor's predecessor, Reid Bigland.

Dave Kelleher, chairman of the Stellantis National Dealer Council, said it had been around seven years since he'd seen Manley converse with dealers at a meeting.

He said other manufacturers have annual gatherings where the "heads of state" for each company address the dealers, but FCA hasn't done that in a while. For Kelleher, that showed "a separation between understanding what's necessary from the retailer's point of view."

Kelleher said Manley's new position will give him a look at how other automakers approach their dealers.

"A lot of the moves we've anguished with, that challenge our bottom lines, that seem to have a disregard for the way we run our businesses, are going to become extraordinarily important to Mike right now on the side of the desk that he's going to be on," Kelleher said. "And the beauty of it is he's going to be able to see what every other manufacturer does because AutoNation basically has every manufacturer. He's going to be able to see how they treat their dealers as opposed to how Stellantis treats their dealers. He's probably going to scratch his head and go, 'Oh, man. I guess we weren't doing that good.' "

Steve Wolf, dealer principal at Helfman Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Houston, met Manley years ago at a dealer event. They kept in touch infrequently over email afterward.

Wolf said Manley once bought an Alfa Romeo that came through the Port of Houston and was damaged. The vehicle was sent to the Helfman team for repair, and Wolf remembered corresponding with Manley about it.

“Hopefully, the new person will be a little more connected with the dealers,” Wolf said. Former CEO Robert “Eaton was connected with the dealers. [Lee] Iacocca obviously was, [Robert] Nardelli was to a certain degree, Jim Press was, but [Manley] was kind of away from the dealer.”