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FIAT Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has announced the appointment of Mark Palavestra as sales director and Neil Whitehead as aftersales director in the latest round of senior leadership changes at the Australian arm of the American-Italian auto-maker.

Mr Palavestra replaces Edward Butler, who told GoAuto this week that he left FCA amicably early in the New Year to take up a new opportunity (details of which should soon be revealed), while Mr Whitehead replaces Stephane Lamari, who left the company late last year to become Nissan Motor Corporation’s vice-president of aftersales for the Asia and Oceania region, based in Thailand.

Sales duo: Mark Palavestra (left) and Neil Whitehead will each play a critical role in FCA Australia’s anticipated turnaround this year.

Mr Butler was in the position for only a year – shifting to FCA from Audi AG in Taiwan, where over a three-year period he served as sales director and, initially, marketing director – while Mr Lamari, who moved to Melbourne after several years with FCA in Canada and Europe, was in the role for about 18 months before taking on the new challenge with Nissan in Bangkok.

FCA Australia president and CEO Steve Zanlunghi has been handling Mr Butler’s responsibilities over the past few weeks before Mr Palavestra, who was previously sales director at Renault Australia, officially starts on February 5.

Mr Butler told GoAuto he left FCA on good terms and that he believed the company had achieved a lot over the past 12 months amid difficult circumstances after several models – particularly from Jeep, but also Dodge (now in recess) – were discontinued.

Edward Butler

“Obviously, we lost a lot of the products that we were selling in 2016 – we lost Compass, we lost Patriot, we lost Journey, we lost Freemont,” he said.

“We brought the (Alfa Romeo) Giulia to market, and that is performing pretty well, there’s some great things about to be launched, and we’ve laid the foundations for all of that.”

Mr Palavestra brings some 25 years’ senior management experience to the role, overseeing Renault’s sales performance over the past six years after moving to the French brand from GM Holden, where he had risen through the ranks across a variety of business areas.

The latter included four-and-a-half years as national government and rental fleet sales manager, five-and-a-half years as business development manager (fleet sales Victoria), about four years as district sales manager of light-commercial vehicles (Victoria) and almost four years as district service manager.

Meanwhile, Mr Whitehead has similarly brought a high level of experience to the aftersales role at FCA, which he took up in December after spending about a year with Deloitte Motor Industry Services as a senior consulting manager.

Prior to that he was group director of aftersales with Volkswagen Group Australia, a position he held for just over two years, and spent almost three years with Audi in Taiwan as aftersales director – a posting that saw him working alongside Mr Butler for a period.

Earlier in his career, Mr Whitehead had a brief stint as general manager of roadside assistance company Assist Australia and five years as general aftersales manager for GM Holden’s premium brands Saab and Hummer.

He also served for more than five years for Saab Automobile Australia in a variety of roles including general manager of sales, aftersales and network development, spent six years with Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) as national sales and marketing manager (parts and accessories) and two years with Nissan Australia as national product marketing manager (accessories).

At FCA, Mr Whitehead will oversee aftersales field management, service, parts and accessories, warranty, customer care, CRM, technical training and warehouse operations.

Stephane Lamari

Mr Palavestra’s responsibilities as sales director include new-vehicle sales, field team management, supply chain, logistics, fleet business and dealer support.

In announcing the appointments, Mr Zanlunghi said: “We spent a significant amount of time in 2017 focused on building foundations within our business and the dealer network as we prepare ourselves for what is going to be an incredibly exciting year for FCA Australia in 2018.

“In order to achieve our objectives and continue our journey to deliver exceptional customer experience, it was important to appoint strong leaders. I am confident both Mark and Neil will be fantastic additions to our leadership team with their combined experience and customer-focused approaches.

“With the unprecedented number of product launches and recent strategic leadership hires,

we are very excited about our future.”

Jeep recently launched the new-generation Compass and high-performance Grand Cherokee

Trackhawk, and will this year introduce its redesigned Cherokee, all-new Wrangler and facelifted Renegade.

FCA will also launch the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and has a number of Fiat and Abarth special-edition model variants in the pipeline.

Last year, Alfa Romeo was the only brand in positive territory across FCA’s stable, posting 1057 sales (+48.7%).

The discontinuation of Dodge saw only four new registrations recorded for the American brand, while FCA’s all-important Jeep line-up managed just 8270 sales (-34.5%).

Now relying only on the 300 large car, Chrysler finished the year with 258 sales (-44.2%), while Fiat (2008, -16.8%) and its commercial arm Fiat Professional (1270, -14.6%) were also down.

By Terry Martin

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