Welcome back!

I hope everyone had a great weekend as we launch into the fall festivities.

Before we jump into this weeks topic, we wanted to let you know that starting next month, we’re launching a new series spotlighting Built to Last readers who are putting timeless business principles into action. Each feature will highlight how you’ve built your company to endure, from the lessons learned in tough seasons to the systems keeping you strong today. If you’re a founder, owner, or operator building something meant to last, we’d love to share your story. Reply to this email or send us a short note about your business for a chance to be featured in our upcoming issue. We only require that you are subscribed to the newsletter and aren’t looking to sell your business to be considered.

With the exciting news out of the way, let’s jump into the business we are looking at today!

This week, we’re looking at Stellantis, a company born from one of the biggest mergers in automotive history that now finds itself fighting to stay relevant. It’s a story about scale, crisis, and what it really takes to rebuild a legacy organization from the inside out.

When your industrial backbone begins to shake, the question isn’t how fast you can react. It’s whether you can rebuild in time to survive.

Stellantis, the fourth largest automaker in the world, has reached that point. The company behind Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, and Citroën is in the middle of a reckoning. Production in Europe is collapsing, profits are tightening, and investor confidence is slipping. For years, the company’s scale was its shield. Today, it might be its biggest weakness.

The board has turned to a man who knows Stellantis from the ground up. Antonio Filosa, a career veteran who began as a trainee at Fiat decades ago, now sits in the driver’s seat. His first move was not to announce a new car or unveil a bold vision of electric dominance. Instead, he began dismantling and rebuilding the leadership structure that governs the company’s 14 global brands. The message was simple: before Stellantis could compete, it had to recalibrate.

To understand the crisis, you have to look at how Stellantis came to be. The company was born in 2021 from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Groupe PSA. On paper, it was a dream pairing. Combined, the two companies would produce over eight million vehicles per year and rival Volkswagen, Toyota, and General Motors. The merger promised more than five billion euros in annual savings through shared technology, global scale, and manufacturing efficiencies. For a moment, it seemed like a perfect marriage of European engineering and American muscle.

But the truth was more complicated. Stellantis was not a company with one identity. It was a federation of legacies. Fiat brought with it more than a century of Italian automotive history and a network of small-car production across Europe. Chrysler carried the DNA of Detroit and the cultural weight of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. PSA arrived with a deep French lineage in Peugeot and Citroën, along with a management culture that prized efficiency and hierarchy.

Each side came with its own traditions, systems, and internal politics. The merger did not erase those differences. It layered them. Fourteen distinct brands now operated under one corporate roof. Every decision about design, manufacturing, or market strategy had to travel through a web of overlapping leaders, national priorities, and cultural interpretations. The result was predictable. Decisions slowed. Products overlapped. The organizational chart became as complex as the vehicles themselves.

In the early years, strong sales in North America, especially from Jeep and Ram, kept the company afloat. But the European division began to show cracks. Fiat struggled to maintain relevance against Volkswagen and new Chinese competitors. Peugeot’s progress stalled. Citroën, long known for its quirky innovation, lost direction. As global markets shifted toward electric vehicles, Stellantis lagged behind the technological curve. It was not a question of talent or resources. It was the weight of the machine itself.

By 2025, these structural weaknesses turned into real pain points. Italian production was projected to fall by nearly a third, according to labor unions. In several key markets, Stellantis was losing ground to both established automakers and aggressive EV newcomers. The company’s electric rollout, once touted as a core priority, failed to keep pace with rivals like Tesla, BYD, and Hyundai. Rising energy costs in Europe added more pressure. The result was a profitability decline that alarmed both investors and employees.

When Antonio Filosa was appointed CEO earlier this year, he inherited an organization that was both enormous and fragile. He had spent more than 25 years rising through the Fiat and Chrysler ecosystem, managing operations in Latin America and later overseeing Jeep globally. That experience made him both an insider and a reformer. He understood the company’s internal politics but had the confidence to make uncomfortable changes.

Within weeks, Filosa initiated a top-to-bottom leadership overhaul. He appointed Emanuele Cappellano to lead European operations, consolidating regional oversight that had previously been scattered across multiple executives. Jean-Philippe Imparato was moved from overseeing Europe to focus entirely on Maserati, a brand that had lost direction but still held global prestige. Francesco Ciancia, who had left for Mercedes years earlier, was brought back to lead manufacturing. Ralph Gilles was promoted to head of global design, and Grégoire Olivier took control of the Asia-Pacific region. Even the financial side was restructured, with João Laranjo named as the new Chief Financial Officer.

This was not a cosmetic shuffle. It was a statement of intent. Filosa’s team represented a mix of internal veterans, external hires, and returning leaders with deep institutional knowledge. The goal was to rebuild clarity in a company where too many people were responsible for the same outcomes. By tightening the leadership map, Filosa was not only addressing accountability but also signaling a cultural reset.

Early signs suggest it might be working. In the most recent quarter, Stellantis reported a thirteen percent increase in global shipments, with North America up thirty-five percent. Those are encouraging numbers, but they are only part of the story. What matters most is whether the company can sustain this momentum long enough to rebuild confidence inside its own walls.

When organizations face existential pressure, the instinct is often to trim costs, freeze hiring, or launch a marketing campaign to buy time. Those moves might create temporary relief, but they rarely solve the underlying issue. The real problem at Stellantis was structural. Too many leaders, too many voices, and too few clear lines of accountability. Filosa recognized that survival required more than financial discipline. It required organizational clarity.

The idea of recalibration is simple in theory but difficult in practice. It means admitting that the way you’ve operated no longer fits the world you compete in. It means rebuilding the systems of decision-making that once made sense but now slow you down. In Stellantis’ case, recalibration is about aligning leadership roles with measurable outcomes. Europe is now under one accountable head. Maserati, long a prestige brand with no consistent direction, now has a leader whose sole job is to fix it. Manufacturing is under a proven operator who understands both legacy craftsmanship and modern automation.

By making these moves, Filosa isn’t chasing headlines. He’s reengineering how the company thinks. The most dangerous phase in any legacy organization comes when its structure outgrows its purpose. Recalibration brings those two back in line. It’s not just about saving a company; it’s about restoring clarity of mission. For Stellantis, that mission must now focus on simplifying its portfolio, modernizing production, and competing head-on in the electric transition without losing the character that made its brands iconic in the first place.

Every enduring company eventually faces a moment when its past success becomes its greatest obstacle. For Stellantis, that moment is now. The merger that once symbolized scale and strength has become a test of adaptability. Whether Filosa’s recalibration succeeds will depend not on quarterly numbers but on whether the company’s culture can evolve fast enough to match its ambitions.

The story of Stellantis is not just about cars. It’s about complexity, courage, and timing. It’s about knowing when the organization you built can no longer carry the weight of its future. Rebuilding, in that sense, is not a reaction to crisis. It is the ultimate act of leadership.

If Filosa succeeds, Stellantis could become a blueprint for how legacy giants reinvent themselves without losing their soul. If he fails, the company will serve as a cautionary tale about the limits of scale in an era that rewards speed. Either way, this is the kind of moment Built to Last was made to study.

Before this merger, both companies were built to last and heavily insulated. But crisis exposes what structure hides. The businesses that last are not those that avoid problems, but those that learn to rebuild around them. Stellantis is still deep in that process, but the steps being taken now will decide whether its name stands beside Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen a decade from now, or becomes another chapter in automotive history about what could have been.

I appreciate you spending this time with us! As always, if you have any ideas for what company we should cover next or have ideas for us to improve, simply respond to this email. we read and respond to every message we get. Until next week!

— The Built To Last Team