Fiat has been selling the Doblo compact van in Europe since 2001 but the Chrysler Group, specifically the new Ram brand, will build its own version in the US. This van is intended to rival Ford Motor Co.’s Transit Connect, which went on sale in the US in July. Chrysler is separating the Ram pickup range from the Dodge brand and adding Ram-badged vans. Continued after the jump!

Fiat, which has a 20 percent stake in Chrysler as well as management control, chose for the Doblo to join a large Fiat-based van to be sold in the US by the new Ram truck brand, along with a restyled chassis cab model and light and heavy duty Ram vehicles.

Chrysler expects that with this new range, Ram sales will be boosted to 415,000 by 2014, up from 280,000 in 2010. Fiat revealed details of its second-generation Doblo earlier this week.

The new Fiat Doblo will go on sale in Europe starting in mid January while US sales of the Ram-badged version will start in 2012. However, Chrysler has yet to come up with a name for the US version of the Doblo. In Europe, the Doblo is sold as seven-seat passenger vehicle or as a panel van.

[via autonews]

Tags: car news, chrysler, chrysler ram, ram doblo, ram fiat doblo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 11:47 pm and is filed under 2009, 4wheels News, Automakers, Body style, Categories, Chrysler, LLC., Compact cars, Fiat, Minivan, U.S.A., Year, Zone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.