FCA to Increase Jeep Wrangler Production by Roughly 50 Percent

By Sam Bendall - March 23, 2016

2016-Jeep-Wrangler-626x382

Already monumentally popular in North America, FCA will now increase production of the Jeep Wrangler as it reconfigures its Toledo, Ohio plant for the next-generation model. The upgrades to the assembly plant will allow FCA to produce 350,000 Wranglers annually, which is 50-percent more than what is currently being manufactured.

According to Automotive News, FCA will continue making the current Wrangler into the first quarter of 2018, about six months after the new model is set to go into production.

Mike Manley, Chief Operations Officer for Jeep, says he wants to keep the balance between supply and demand for Wrangler “at the right place, and to me that is supply just behind demand.”

The Toledo plant is the only assembly line in the world churning out the Wrangler. FCA recently announced that it will halt Jeep Cherokee production there in March 2017, and move its assembly to the plant in Belvidere, Illinois, so the Toledo plant can focus solely on producing Wranglers.

The upgrades in Toledo will shutdown the Cherokee-building portion of the plant for roughly six months to allow for retooling and manufacture of body-on-frame Wranglers. When production resumes, the Toledo plant will produce the standard Wrangler, a diesel-powered variant, and pickup-style Wrangler. The latter is expected to debut in 2018. The report goes on to say that the current-generation model will remain in production until March 2018, likely sold as the Wrangler Classic.

Manley also said that there’s unmet demand for the Wrangler in North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. “We’ve seen some weakness coming out of Asia, for the obvious reasons of where China is today,” said Manley. “But we still see a strong order bank from the U.S., more demand from Europe, and still some residual demand from Asia that we can’t fill.”

While most of the Wrangler’s sales are in North America, Manley also said that it remains popular globally. In Europe, the Wrangler “is in demand because of what it stands for,” said the executive. “It is the incarnation of the most iconic American brand in the world, and the same thing [is true] in China, so demand continues to grow.”