The Stellantis Group was just in the media with the rebirth of the Lancia brand, which was believed to be dead, but now a mega deal is announced: car rental company Sixt wants to buy up to a quarter of a million vehicles in the next three years. Including Lancia.
“The agreement is worth several billion euros,” the two companies said. Stellantis is intended to equip parts of the rental fleets in Europe and North America. These are vehicles from the brands Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, Vauxhall and Maserati. The cars belong to different vehicle classes, from city cars to SUVs and vehicles from the van & truck segment (including seven- and nine-seaters). The first vehicles are scheduled to arrive in the spring. Sixt does not commit to orders beyond the current year – how many vehicles the rental company ultimately purchases depends on need and demand. Premium brands will continue to be retained. The company from Pullach near Munich can use the framework agreement with Stellantis to develop its “growth strategy in the future “We are moving forward at an accelerated pace,” said co-CEO Konstantin Sixt. Traditionally, Sixt’s fleet consists largely of the German brands Mercedes, BMW and Audi. In recent years, Sixt has struggled with the supply of new vehicles. This was because the company expanded strongly, especially in the USA, and increased sales by almost 20 percent in the first nine months of 2023 alone. During the corona pandemic, Sixt temporarily reduced the size of its fleet. According to the annual report, the company added 146,200 new cars to its fleet in 2022 for 4.9 (2021: 5.1) billion euros, a good 20,000 fewer than a year earlier. Figures for 2023 are not yet available. Electric cars also included. Some of the Stellantis vehicles for Sixt will be electric cars. It recently became known that Sixt no longer wanted to include Tesla in its own fleet due to the weak residual values. Most recently there were around 3,000 pieces. A Sixt spokesman said that in the long term, 70 to 90 percent of the Sixt fleet should consist of electric vehicles. Sixt wants to have the vehicles on the road for around seven to eight months. Stellantis should then buy them back.
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