Photo: vburlapp / Instagram
While General Motors and Toyota battled like 'maniacs' during the first six months of the year for control over the US auto sales kingdom's throne, Stellantis quietly hit a massive second-quarter drop in deliveries.
GM barely kept ahead of Toyota due to a slight 0.4% dip to 1,290,319 units after the first six months of the year. The Japanese automaker followed swiftly with a massive 14.3% gain to 1,186,647 vehicles, and after H1, there were less than 104k examples between them. That's the rosy shade.
Meanwhile, Stellantis inhabits the gray area where the third-largest US automaker is free-falling without a parachute – their Q2 sales dropped 21% to almost 345k vehicles. We don't know the H1 tally yet; they're breaking down the bad news as the first-half performance is scheduled for release on July 25 – they hope that no one will notice them because that's the same day when GM presents the next installment on the C8 Corvette saga, the ZR1 flagship.
Anyway, there were some bright spots in Stellantis' documents – such as the fact that American customers still care about the company's admiral ship, Chrysler. The only problem is the brand only has the Pacifica and Pacifica Hybrid minivans on sale – and even with that low pool of resources, they still dominated the rest of the MPV sector. But can they survive, let alone thrive, only on the back of a model that's part of a dying breed?
Of course not; even the parallel universes of vehicular CGIs see that. More precisely, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators has Vince Burlapp (aka vburlapp on social media or burlappcar.com), a prolific virtual artist who loves to dream of all the latest models across the wide-ranging automotive realm, and he's been recently investigating the issue of Chrysler's ultra-small range.
Based on the latest reveals from the rumor mill, he believes that Chrysler is "hard at work on their first new model in many, many years." He's got a suspect, too – the series-production version of the Chrysler Halcyon concept from a few weeks ago. That new model will be obviously based on the new STLA Large platform, just like the 2024 Dodge Charger and 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S, a very versatile architecture that allows both ICE and EV powertrains and various body styles.
At the time, the pixel master believed Chrysler had nothing to lose and could also go "nuts" and offer "something larger, better, and more expensive" than a Hyundai Ioniq 6 or Tesla Model S. As such, the CGI expert decided to cook up a return of the "good old days" of land yachts and envisioned a revival of the Chrysler Imperial lineage.
Introduced in 1926, the nameplate was Chrysler's top vehicle for decades as production occurred from 1926–1954, 1989–1993, and between 1955 and 1975 plus 1981 through 1983, it was a standalone luxury brand. During those times, Chrysler's Imperial duked it out with Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, Cord, Packard, and most recently, Lincoln and Cadillac.
Interestingly, the author didn't kick off the unofficial, highly hypothetical proceeds with a four-door model and; instead, he CGI-envisioned a new Imperial Coupe based on the STLA Large platform – "something a bit retro-futuristic, vaguely inspired by the 1981 model." It's an obvious statement that land yachts are dearly missed by everyone, for sure.
But that wasn't all – now it's time to glimpse "a possible look, although very unlikely, of a future Imperial sedan." More precisely, he doesn't want his unofficial, hypothetical, and completely wishful-thinking design project to come in place of the new model based on the Halcyon prototype. Instead, the author believes there is enough space above it for "a true top-of-the-line new Chrysler sedan." This time, the inspiration comes from the two generations of the modern Chrysler 300 but with the underpinnings based on the STLA platform – and it could compete with the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class but also with the Lucid Air, Mercedes EQS, or BMW 7 Series and i7.
Meanwhile, Stellantis inhabits the gray area where the third-largest US automaker is free-falling without a parachute – their Q2 sales dropped 21% to almost 345k vehicles. We don't know the H1 tally yet; they're breaking down the bad news as the first-half performance is scheduled for release on July 25 – they hope that no one will notice them because that's the same day when GM presents the next installment on the C8 Corvette saga, the ZR1 flagship.
Anyway, there were some bright spots in Stellantis' documents – such as the fact that American customers still care about the company's admiral ship, Chrysler. The only problem is the brand only has the Pacifica and Pacifica Hybrid minivans on sale – and even with that low pool of resources, they still dominated the rest of the MPV sector. But can they survive, let alone thrive, only on the back of a model that's part of a dying breed?
Of course not; even the parallel universes of vehicular CGIs see that. More precisely, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators has Vince Burlapp (aka vburlapp on social media or burlappcar.com), a prolific virtual artist who loves to dream of all the latest models across the wide-ranging automotive realm, and he's been recently investigating the issue of Chrysler's ultra-small range.
Based on the latest reveals from the rumor mill, he believes that Chrysler is "hard at work on their first new model in many, many years." He's got a suspect, too – the series-production version of the Chrysler Halcyon concept from a few weeks ago. That new model will be obviously based on the new STLA Large platform, just like the 2024 Dodge Charger and 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S, a very versatile architecture that allows both ICE and EV powertrains and various body styles.
At the time, the pixel master believed Chrysler had nothing to lose and could also go "nuts" and offer "something larger, better, and more expensive" than a Hyundai Ioniq 6 or Tesla Model S. As such, the CGI expert decided to cook up a return of the "good old days" of land yachts and envisioned a revival of the Chrysler Imperial lineage.
Introduced in 1926, the nameplate was Chrysler's top vehicle for decades as production occurred from 1926–1954, 1989–1993, and between 1955 and 1975 plus 1981 through 1983, it was a standalone luxury brand. During those times, Chrysler's Imperial duked it out with Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, Cord, Packard, and most recently, Lincoln and Cadillac.
Interestingly, the author didn't kick off the unofficial, highly hypothetical proceeds with a four-door model and; instead, he CGI-envisioned a new Imperial Coupe based on the STLA Large platform – "something a bit retro-futuristic, vaguely inspired by the 1981 model." It's an obvious statement that land yachts are dearly missed by everyone, for sure.
But that wasn't all – now it's time to glimpse "a possible look, although very unlikely, of a future Imperial sedan." More precisely, he doesn't want his unofficial, hypothetical, and completely wishful-thinking design project to come in place of the new model based on the Halcyon prototype. Instead, the author believes there is enough space above it for "a true top-of-the-line new Chrysler sedan." This time, the inspiration comes from the two generations of the modern Chrysler 300 but with the underpinnings based on the STLA platform – and it could compete with the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class but also with the Lucid Air, Mercedes EQS, or BMW 7 Series and i7.
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