Making Jeeps in Melfi

While some people thought that building a Jeep in Italy—specifically, the Renegade (see autofieldguide.com/articles/on-the-2015-jeep-renegade-serious-fun) in the FCA Melfi plant—not only has the product been a huge success in Europe, but it is doing well in the U.S., too, with 28,907 units sold through August.

And speaking of August, that’s when the plant had its one-year anniversary of producing the Jeep, as well as the Fiat 500X (see autofieldguide.com/articles/designing-the-fiat-500x), and the Fiat Grande Punto.

To produce the Renegade and the 500X (they share a platform), FCA invested over one-billion Euros in the plant.

The 1.9-million m2 plant went into production in 1993. It includes a stamping shop, body-in-white area, paint, and final assembly. There are five stamping machines and two shears in the stamping shop, 860 robots in body-in-white, 54 robots in paint, and 278 automatic fastening stations in final assembly. There are approximately 4,000 people putting the vehicles together in the plant, and some 8,000 in total. They built over 135,000 Renegades in the first year of production. 

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