Chrysler Finished Sourcing for US Fiat 500 Assembly

Chrysler Group has finished sourcing the parts it needs in order to build the American version of the Fiat 500 city car, which it plans to put on sale at the end of this year. Chrysler’s plans to build and sell the “Cinquecento”, a big hit in Europe on the posh city cars segment, started in June 2009, when Fiat announced its partnership with Chrysler.

Chrysler announced yesterday that the mini car will be assembled in its Toluca plant in Mexico and that the parts sourcing operation is complete. The news was delivered by Dan Knott, senior vice president in charge of purchasing, at the Society of Automotive Engineers conference, as the Detroit News reported.

Chrysler has found 145 parts suppliers for the 500, 35 of which are NAFTA-based companies that did not supply parts for the European version of the Fiat 500 until now, Knott said. Many of these companies are current Chrysler suppliers.

The Chrysler official added that the criteria according to which new suppliers were chosen over existing ones was a combination of cost and quality. He gave the example of the radio, where sourcing went to Delphi since its satellite radio in the US was considered of better quality than that offered by the supplier of the European version.

Launched in 2007, exactly 50 years after the original 500 was presented, the new Fiat 500 sports a retro-oriented design and is built on a joint platform with Ford Ka. The main competitor of Fiat’s city car is BMW’s MINI. Production of the European version is based in Poland.