How do you solve a problem like Stellantis?

UK boss Maria Grazia Davino has been sent to troubleshoot a big group of complex and diverse brands with their own way of doing things. Mark Tisshaw hears her plan

- Mark Tisshaw

Few jobs in the automotive industry are tougher than Stellantis in the UK, a classic case of a role with lots of power but very little glory.

Incorporated in 2021 following the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the PSA Group (the latter at the time having only recently merged with Opel-Vauxhall), Stellantis turned to Maria Grazia Davino in September last year to try to bring together these still quite disparate brands from all areas of the market and different countries, each with challenges of their own.

Davino, formerly Stellantis's head of sales and marketing for Europe, made headlines soon after walking into the firm's UK headquarters in Coventry by stating publicly that it was facing "major operational issues" - typically related to logistics problems, the dealer network and integrating such disparate back-end invoicing, banking and aftersales systems from different companies - and has since been on the front foot trying to solve them.

She quickly embarked on a one-week tour of the dealer network from northern Scotland to southern England and visited more than 60 businesses to hear about these problems firsthand. They were a disgruntled bunch that placed Stellantis brands en masse towards the bottom of the most recent National Franchised Dealers Association's dealer attitudes survey. The evening of our visit in January, she was off to Ireland for another leg of the dealer tour and, like a great rock and roll band, will keep touring indefinitely for a constant "reality check".