Ralph Gilles sat at the head of the conference room table in Chrysler Group LLC's headquarters. The president of Dodge Car Brand, with eight months on the job, let out a sigh and disarmed the room with his smile.

"It's exciting," he said of all the work he's been doing since Fiat SpA took over as the head of Chrysler. "This place has never been buzzing like this before."




Quote from the article:

Q : How has Dodge changed since the November presentation (a day-long event when the company's broad plans were unveiled) by you, Fiat executives and others. A : We're Ram-less for one. But things are taking hold. We now have our 100,000th Facebook fan. We went from virtually nothing online a few months ago. The brand is becoming hipper already. And the brand is getting controversial, in a good way. We're really starting to smell different, act different. We showed up a few weeks ago at the super bike event in Utah. We had a drift competition and hundreds, thousands of people were lining up for these thrill rides. And then we had the World Cup ads. Being in the World Cup touches my multicultural audience, it touches my sport enthusiasts, it touches my young-at-heart audience. We're tying to give the brand a cool edge to it, with a lot of unexpected activity, where people are shaken aware of us, and it's working. Q : When the new Charger arrives and it gets the Pentastar 3.6-liter V-6, will the engine top 300 horsepower? A : I'm not saying. We will investigate that and we are looking at a higher-power version of (the Pentastar V-6). It will have a unique power rating, I will say that. Q : When the new Durango replacement arrives in November, will it be called a Durango?

Source: Dodge president discusses company's future, new vehicles

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