Stellantis might sound like a shipping company but it is in fact the new name for the new company formed by the merger of Groupe PSA and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). It’s perhaps not the most exciting piece of van news you’ll read this year, but it does have big implications for the van market in the UK.
How come? Well it means that in the future, even more vans are going to be essentially the same, even though they carry different badges on the front and back.
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Which vans are already built by Groupe PSA?
Groupe PSA is already a big family and a big builder of identikit vans. Most famously the parent firm of Peugeot and Citroen, it also owns Vauxhall (which trades in Europe as Opel) – and it builds vans for Toyota.
As a result, the current Citroen Dispatch, Peugeot Expert, Vauxhall Vivaro and the Toyota Proace are all versions of the same medium van. It’s the same story with the Citroen Berlingo, Peugeot Partner, Vauxhall Combo and Toyota Proace City – joint-winners of the 2021 Parkers Small Van of the Year award.
How many vans does Fiat build?
This is more complicated. The Fiat Ducato large van also forms the basis of the Citroen Relay and the Peugeot Boxer – so that’s all fine and dandy right from the off. We understand that the Vauxhall Movano will soon be moving to this platform as well.
However, presently the medium-sized Fiat Talento is based on the Renault Trafic, and built by Renault on Fiat’s behalf. We fully expect that arrangement to come to an end quite quickly (we’re checking), and for the Talento to soon be based on the Groupe PSA platform.
Fiat’s small van, the Doblo, is based on Fiat’s own platform. We expect this to be combined with the Groupe PSA models soon as well.
The even smaller Fiat Fiorano already shares a platform with the Peugeot Bipper and Citroen Nemo – though the latter pair are no longer sold in the UK.
So what will the van market look like in the future as a result of the merger?
Following the creation of Stellantis, it seems likely that we will shortly find ourselves in a situation where five small vans, five medium vans and at least four large vans are really exactly the same under the skin.
And this is in a marketplace that already has Ford and Volkswagen joining forces in an alliance, plus Mercedes-Benz and Renault (which also builds Nissan’s vans) working together.
Van makers come to these arrangements as a means of saving money developing and building new products, so they should help to keep prices down – which is important as new models get loaded with more and more technology and safety features.
But with so many vans being essentially the same, there is also a risk to choice and innovation. So it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few years.
Also read:
>> Citroen reviews on Parkers Vans and Pickups
>> Fiat review on Parkers Vans and Pickups
