While we knew Fiat Chrysler Automobiles would have to undergo substantial changes after it merged with PSA Group to form Stellantis, many enthusiasts were holding out hope that the North American Street & Racing Technology (SRT) engineering team would skate by unmolested.
No such luck.
Over the weekend, Mopar Insiders reported that the newly formed company had actually disbanded SRT so its members could be reintegrated into the general population. Our assumption was that the company didn’t want want to advertise that it had dissolved the group responsible for some of the most memorable and exciting Mopar models in history. But the company explained itself when prompted.
“All of the core elements of the SRT performance engineering team have been integrated into our company’s global engineering organization,” a Stellantis spokesperson told the outlet. “This action will have the two-way benefit of ensuring that our brands’ SRT and performance-focused product offerings continue to meet the highest quality standards and expectations while delivering key learnings from motorsports and other high-performance-technology applications across a wider mix of our company’s product lines.”
“These products have delighted enthusiasts for nearly two decades, and Stellantis will continue to sell and develop the next generation of Dodge//SRT-branded vehicles, as well as Jeep and Ram vehicles that utilize high-performance SRT technology,” she concluded.
While that makes it sound as though the whole company will be benefiting from SRT’s engineering prowess, plenty of folks on this side of the pond don’t care about how well this decision is going to work out for the Citroën Berlingo. Still, hope remains that PSA engineers can be similarly tapped to improve the performance of future models slated for our roads.
As for the name, everything we’ve heard since the merger was approaching completion suggested that future SRT models would be a Dodge-only affair. Jeep’s high-performance models will carry the Trackhawk name while Chrysler is just a giant question mark.
[Images: FCA/Stellantis]
