>> i'll bet you have heard of the name mopart, but unless you are a hard core chrysler fan, you don't know much about it. turns out the mopar brand has been used for 70 years to market parts and accessories. now chrysler wants to breathe more life into moh par and make it strong as chrysler and jeep

brands. sergio marchioni brought in petrpetropietro gorlier to desi. stick around, that's what we'll discuss. >> here now is john mcelroy. >> here we are in studio with the president and ceo of the mopar brand. joining us is jeff bennett from the wall street journal and eric mayne from wards. great to have you too. i'm fascinated with what is going on with the mopar brands. i have interviewed countless spokespersons, but i don't believe anyone has talked about the mopar brand before.

here you are as ceo, doing all of these things. what are the marrin marching instructions that sergio gave you? >> the m oorkopar brand has a lf history, 75 years of history, and within the last ten years has been neglected. a lot of industry firsts, but was not under the spotlight. mopar is in charge of everything, is about taking care of the customer after the purchase of a car. one of the main missions we have at chrysler is to improve and revamp the customer experience. so naturally, mopar is an important asset in this process.

take care of the customer is the mission, and giving the best experience when they come to our dealership. >> how important is mopar to the customer's biz ?ns business? >> i tell you, november 2009 when we presented our plan, our ceo was clear in explaining the mission of mopar was to improve the customer experience and being a profiter of the car company. >> you are profitable now. >> i was wondering too, in mr. marchioni's discussions with

you, bringing mopar out as a separate brand, was to put it into the spotlight? what did that do that was different, do you think? >> i think one of the main principles of our ceo is when you have a brand, you need to focus on the dna of the brand. this is true with our other brands. every one of these brands has a different dna. they target different customer phases. once you have a brand like mopar with a large following of enthusiasts, you can't just forget that there are hundreds of thousands of entheu enthusian the market. we have four independent magazines that we don't control, they use the mopar name to reach

these large following of enthusiasts. you need to be specific in all of the action that you do to be aligned with the brand dna. the mopar dna is acting value brand in times of providing accessories to expand the accessibility of our cars and providing services in our leadership. >> you are taking it to a leadership that has never been taken before as chrysler. you have a mopar branded car. you took the dodge challenger with modifications, but it says mopar. explain the other vehicles you are going to do. >> that's an interesting story. you can find a lot of books

about mopar cars. i told you when i came onboard, my team gave me a bunch of book to read because they were afraid of the mopar brand. it is clear that there is an immediate connection between dodge and moped. people are using the tool brands, easily referring to mopar cars. i said, we have a lot of mopar cars, but no one of these cars have really the mopar logo on. there may be some sticker, but not the logo as the main, so i called rob. i said, what do you think it would take to create a mopar car? that's when we co conceived the car.

500 units sold in a few weeks, full of mopar contents, and reaching our enthusiasts to say, here we are again. this time the results of the mopar car. this is a car legal, but we have the side of the business that is the performance side. we put the car back on the market, 70 units, taking the engine of the wiper for racing. >> back to the street. [ engine roaring ] >> one more too, if i'm right, the ram, the brand at chrysler has shown a high-performance truck called the ramrodder.

is that part of mopar as well? >> absolutely. we took the ram, and we started developing akita. what can we do with the ram? we were going every year on the jeep safari. what can we do with a ram? i think a ram, racing on the dune, we would like to work with the suspension. we need new fenders, new bumpers, we use the expertise of the legend. it came out a ram runner. iin march, were going to lone these 13,000-dollar moving the ram to the level of a real

desert racing truck. >> what model in the chrysler portfolio benefits most from mopar? are ram customers, challenger customers? >> i think we touch pretty well all of the brands. the most sold car is the challenger. we sell $800 of accessories for every challenger. in second position, ran wrangled ram. for different reasons. the jeep wrangler is sort of the perfect car for access. we sell accessories 20 years old for that. >> are you looking at performance? >> i would say, when you move to the brand specifically we are talking about different bumper

bumpers -- obviously, all the chrome inserts that is still a big deal. when you move to the ram, the typical accessories is the sidestep. challenger, you are in the performer. i have intakes or hoods -- then you have all the other accessories that are not related to performance. floor mats, mud guards or whatever. we are normally launching with every new model out of the gate about 100 or 120 accessories for each car. in 2011, we are thinking -- considering the number of vehicles we are launching, another thousand accessories. >> are you finding customers are

getting that done at the dealership, or is it spreading that more customers are doing it themselves? >> i think -- it depends on the type of customer. we can install accessories near the plant. it's very important because one of the key elements is having the ability to display the car or truck. a ram with a bed liner, having it delivered to the dealership. the do it yourself is the role for the wrangler, where you have the typical wrangler customer that buys something new. every year, you want something.

in that case there is a lot of do it yourself. >> isn't one of the keys to cracking the market of accessories is getting it baked into the financing of the vehicle. if you are talking $800 over a three to five year loan, it's not that expensive on a monthly basis, but you have to get the company and dealership to sell it that way. what are you doing to do that? >> we have an accessory club, which is a club that the dealers can join and we give all the tools to the sales people to be able to sell accessories to the customers. you touched an important point. selling accessories is an art. it involves three elements in the dealership. the sales part, the service

part, they have to install accessories, and the third part is to have the accessories in stock. we work very close with these three elements of the dealership to realize this. this is successful because during 2010, we have almost doubled the number of accessories that we sell for every car. expanding the portfolio and improving the penetration. >> this is another area of responsibility, customer service. what initiatives do you have under way, and can you give us a status report on? >> definitely, there is an interest by chrysler as a corporation that is rolling out dealers standard, the level of dealership. the experience and customer car.

it's a great tool. the direction of the dealer is to realize in every part of the dealership and to take care of the customer. the other important initiative is the relaunch of the activity in the service line. we have launched -- relaunched existing, but lagging without a lot of -- what do we call, the express lane. express lane means having the possibility to drive through a dealership for an oil change, maintenance, having the service done in 15 or 20 minutes, consistently throughout the day. an important and vital element of the customer retainership process. if you start losing the customer for the oil change, you will not

only miss the opportunity to sell other parts or accessories, but also, you break the relationship with the customer in the first two or three years. when it comes to the moment to buy another car or go through major repairs, the customer has been lost from the dealership base, probably using an independent service. this, of course, is becoming very important. the moment where the quality is improving, the vehicle is improving quality, and before you don't have the customer in your dealership. >> pushing for saturday openings. are there sunday openings on the horizon? >> it's coming. i don't know if i'll be popular

for that. my point is, let us address saturday. a year ago we assessed our macro. we had 60% of our dealers open on saturday, beginning 2010. that is not a number that is unusual among the official offices. the independents, other provider of service, always opened on saturday. the conversation with the dealers was pretty clear. you are losing a large portion of your business, and it's not just the business, but you are also losing the loyalty of your customers. the best day is saturday. when you have the warning light coming out asking for an oil change, you say, let me have

this done quickly, affectively, 15 or 20 minutes, done. price is not necessarily the first element of evaluation, so we started this conversation with the dealers, and they understood. we moved from 60 to 70. the end of 2010, we have 70% of the dealers open. we are bargaining 80%, probably a num numbing being able to be .

>> when you come, you can shope up overnight, saturday, sunday. why shouldn't we provide the same experience to our can you ? that is true for saturday. then we started sunday. sunday is more difficult. you need more investments. you need people in your dealership to have a day off. i'm not saying we are open seven days a week and everyone is working seven days a week. you can have shifts, but that is the next point. >> i was at the chrysler 300, redesign of the car, beautifully done. it was done with a smaller grill. that was controversial because

it was the bling of the original model that set the stage for it. it was intrigue today fiend that mopar will sell different grills on that model. you brought some in. talk about that and let's start with the diamond grill. why are you doing these things and talk about why you came up with different grills to sell for this car? >> first of all, you need to go back to the previous 300. a car with a great success, and definitely, you can't avoid to notice the grill is an important part of the car, the front of the car. what happened with the old 300 with a square grill, we started developing in the after market, other opportunities, looking at the other grills valuable in the market, so even the old 300 had

three additional after market grills. we sold about in excess of 15,000 grills during the life. when the new 300 in design launched, we said, okay, we need to repeat the same experience, and there were -- one car was so common to have a grill, you start thinking, what is the best one? >> finally, the brand decided to go ahead with the car you have seen in the production, car, so we said, fine. we have the opportunity to multiply the number of 300 you can have, taking the number we had previously and creating new grills. we started with the diamond grill that is a reinterpretation

of the grill on the previous model. we talk always about grills. i said, they are fresh from the supplier, came out yesterday and will hit the showrooms in march. that is part of our impressive grill with aluminum -- >> not plastic. >> no plastic. >> then you have another one called 13 bars. >> the 13 bars is a new one. it is a specific development with the design. when talking with designers, there is always a problem. they have designed the car. we say, what else can we do? >> there is a market. this is one of the elements of mopar. we have the ability to design

accessories. we can add something to what has been designed by the design office and brand. the 13, again, alu aluminum cast which is going to be a new grill. we took what we call the mesh grill, that we had already, the one calling sometimes the mantle grill. a big success with the previous 300. now we have up to six grills. we'll also make two different versions of the production grill, one in black chrome and another in satin chrome. the last baby, we'll also ready to launch exactly the grill of the former 300 to keep the same

design of the square grill. we'll have a seventh. >> if i'm a customer, and i want to go to the dealer, what would it cost me to have that? >> the price of the grill will run between $350 to $700. it depends on the material. we are fine tuning the price, but this is the price range. >> i understand too from dealers we talked to that you will go a step further when fiat comes out. i have been hearing that some dealers want to sell wracks of cars that they bring the car in and could change wraps. >> a wrap is like a decal, a plastic coating you can put on.

>> it is a decal and can move from a stripe to being the whole roof of the car. the 500 is one of the most successful access rised cars in europe. chrome on the car, etc. it's a versatile car where you can do different things. we are leveraging the experience of europe, creating a line of 150 original accessories that we'll sell in our dealership. you move from all of the possible types of stripes to a flag on the roof or, as i am

always mentioning, for instance, matching the rug of your car on the key t fob. the key is sort of the ambassador of the car. it's the thing you keep in your hand, that you put on the counter of the bar when you have a beer in the restaurant or on your desk. why not personalize the key fob. we have allowed the gamut of accessories. the customer base will be very excited. >> unfortunately, with that, we have to wrap up the show. petrpietro gorlier, thank you fr coming on. >> thank you. >> jeff and eric, thanks for coming by.

i'll be back in a moment with closing thoughts. >> i'm fascinated by w chrysler is doing with the mopar brand, especially coming out with cars with the mopar name. keeping dealerships open saturday and sunday is news worthy. time will tell if they can compete with service shochs. i'm also intrigued that an italian was chosen to revive the brand. i definitely want to see where all of this goes. that brings us to the end of this show. join us again next week as we continue to give you an inside look at what's going on in the automotive industry.