In the last 18 months alone, longtime Stellantis executive Tim Kuniskis led Dodge and RAM through some major releases. The 1,025-horsepower Challenger Demon 170 arrived in March of 2023. Soon after, Jay Leno partnered with the brand, the Hornet arrived, the Durango SRT Special Editions came out, and Dodge released the new Charger with a very weird promo. Power, speed, and performance were the focus across most of these launches. Then, on May 17th, just over two weeks after Kuniskis had praised the latest “hot” RAM pickup, the RHO, he silently retired. At the age of 57 and with 32 years within the company, he just decided it was time to hang it up.
The timing seemed odd to some fans in the community. Most media organizations simply reported the retirement, Automotive News mentioned it in its larger story titled “Stellantis exec departures raise alarm among U.S. dealers, salaried workers,” and some smaller outlets openly called it a surprise. Did Kuniskis really want to ride 1,025 horsepower off into the sunset? Was he forced out or maybe even quietly fired?
That’s what several conspiracy theorists online believe. Most are just everyday Mopar, Dodge, and Ram fans, like in the case of this DurangoSRT Forum post with 126 comments about it on the day of the announcement. Here are just a couple of those comments:
Well..ya had to figure sooner or later they were gonna kick ole Timmy to the curb…NOW for sure were done…like him..or hate him..he served the performance segment well…for as long as he could…interesting to see where he surfaces…he’s way too young to just ride off into the sunset
They forced out just about all engineering…why is it so hard to think that ole Timmy wasn’t forced out as well….I’m sure they have a plan…It’s just not to our liking…
On the Allpar forum, a post about it with 182 comments includes this sentiment:
Was Kuniskis pushed out? After 30+ years with the company, an abrupt retirement like this feels more like a case of “retire or you’re fired.”
Even a Mustang forum had one poster suspecting that this wasn’t a retirement:
He’s “retiring” while their sales are down 14% while the industry as a whole is up 3.1%
Others with similar thoughts are prominent members of the enthusiast community with tens of thousands of followers. Here are some videos about the departure, starting with RacerX’s titled “The Real Reason Tim Kuniskis Left Dodge? I finally speak out!” — which has 53,000 views:
Here’s another video from YouTuber “Reignited,” though it has under 6,000 views:
There are 24,000 views on the below video by OCMotivator titled “TIM KUNISKIS “RETIRES” FROM DODGE! I’M NOT BUYING IT! NOPE”:
There are 64,000 views on this Butter Da Insider video headlined “Dodge’s CEO FIRED for CALLING OUT STELLANTIS for cancelling Hemi V8?”:
Here’s another video from a smaller channel; the clip has about 9,100 views:
Among just these five videos shown above the creators have over half a million combined subscribers, and these videos in particular have over 150,000 views and 2,100+ comments combined. Some of these creators have made several videos regarding the situation, too. There’s a great deal of smoke around this topic. With that in mind, let’s throw some thumbtacks in the corkboard and break out the twine.
Birth Of The Brotherhood
If all of this sounds like much ado about a random automotive executive then you probably haven’t heard of the ‘Brotherhood of Muscle.’ It’s a close-knit community of high-horsepower Dodge fans, and to them, the man’s-man (as he portrays himself) Kuniskis is more than just an exec — he’s a legend. David Freiburger, a prominent enthusiast, TV personality, and wrencher who worked with Kuniskis had this to say about Kuniskis’ impact:
Dodge and Ram president Tim Kuniskis is out, retiring from Stellantis. IMO, no one has done more to drive muscle car culture in the 2000s, as he pushed the team and kept old models alive and exciting with new power and trim packages. He approved the type of OE advertising that had never before been seen, leading with lots of tire smoke. I remember him calling me behind the SEMA booth and saying, “what if we had a new car with a trans brake?” That became the Demon. Years later, “what if we had a car that needed a parachute?” That became the Demon 170. Crazy stuff. He and MotorTrend’s Eric Schwab were the impetus of our Roadkill Nights race. When they asked how to make it bigger, I said we had to have the race ON Woodward. Tim looked at someone in the room and said, “F$%# yeah! Let’s make that happen.” And he did. He’ll definitely be missed. End of an era.
Let’s backtrack and start at the beginning, though. Kuniskis became CEO of Dodge for the first time back in 2011. The Charger and Challenger hadn’t been out very long, but both needed a boost to stay relevant. Between the two models, sales were flat that year in spite of debuting after a long hiatus in 2008.
For the 2012 model year, the Charger SRT and SRT8 Super Bee arrived. Sales increased by 18 percent year over year for the sedan and by 9 percent for the Challenger. Kuniskis would follow that same strategy of bringing in new performance models and classic nomenclature in the years to come. This is where the Brotherhood comes in. Tim and Dodge made it cool to flex horsepower figures above all else. Vin Diesel and Bill Goldberg starred in several ads for the brand. The Brotherhood of Muscle became a marketing scheme that spoke to Dodge’s market loudly.
The 707-horsepower Hellcat twins arrived in 2015, two cars that sounded crazy on paper but that brought a lot of attention to Dodge. Remember that at the time, the most famous American sports car, the Corvette, made 650 horsepower in its most potent form. Since then, the automaker has never really relinquished the horsepower crown.
When the Camaro and Mustang moved away from a focus on the drag strip the Challenger and Charger embraced it. From 2015 through 2019, Kuniskis shifted to various roles focused on passenger cars in North America as the global head for Alfa Romeo and Maserati while also serving as the director of marketing for Fiat for a short time. Then, in 2021, he returned to lead Dodge again. Despite very few serious updates to the Challenger, it beat the Mustang and Camaro in sales for 2021 and 2022. In 2023, when it went out of production it lost to the Mustang by fewer than 4,000 units.
In some ways, Kuniskis’ tenures have been a big middle finger to those who are a little more eco-conscious, or at least that’s the way fans talk about him. On the day of his retirement here are just a few things fans said: “Thanks, Tim for making 800HP (not to mention 1025HP) muscle cars from the factory a reality. It’s been a fun ride!” Here’s another: “Automotive history will remember him as one of the greats given enough time.” And: “I figure Tim was given 2 options and chose ‘to retire’ (the guy is like 50, so I royally doubt he’s retiring).”
Kuniskis is like a holy horsepower prophet to many Mopar fans, which is why we’re seeing so many conspiracy theories.
Kuniskis Says The CEO ‘Burned Our Boats’
Of course, time rolling on is a force powerful enough that not even an executive as successful as Kuniskis can stop it. Stellantis has big plans under its Dare Forward 2030 banner. According to Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares (shown above), “We are expanding our vision, breaking the limits, and embracing a new mindset.”
That’s all just fancy PR speak for a bunch of goals (albeit ones good for the environment) related to climate change that the company wants to hit by 2030.
Here’s where the “villain” in the eyes of the Brotherhood comes in. Tavares is the first CEO of Stellantis. He made $39.5 million last year, up from $20.5 million in 2021, which was already enough for both French presidential hopefuls at the time to call his compensation package “shocking.”
Stellantis has a big vision for the automaker that’s driven by profits the same as any other company. Under Tavares though, the cost-cutting has been “ruthless,” according to some reports.
If Kuniskis is Ricky Bobby who just “wants to drive fast” then, in some folks’ eyes, Tavares, in his European business suits, is the perfect Jean Girard foil.
“I’m here to make Stellantis successful. When I talk to a blue-collar worker about the goals I set for his plant, I tell him: ‘It’s demanding but if you don’t meet these goals, you’ll be in a vulnerable position. Only performance protects,'” Tavares told Le Monde in 2023.
Did he look at Kuniskis as a blue-collar worker? Tavares’ desire to shave costs, impact the bottom line above all else, and increase the company’s stock price required Dodge and RAM to change. These are all thoughts going through Dodge fans’ conspiracy-filled heads right now.
Part of Taveres’s plan was eliminating the use of carbon credits, and that hit Dodge and RAM’s bottom line in a huge way. Each was leveraging the use of said credits to keep making iron-block V8s. Don’t take my word for it, Tim said that himself. Early in 2024, he spoke at a Stellantis “Fireside Chat” and he sort of calls out Tavares:
“Our CEO has made it very easy for us to focus on it. And he did that by not allowing us to ever buy a single credit, I mean it’s not even a topic of discussion. We’re not buying credits, we’re not going to do that. And not having that mental safety blanket really forces you to self-regulate, it forces you to make the tough calls, and we literally adjust our plans on a monthly basis based on where we see the trajectory of compliance. Ram is a great example of that. If we had that safety blanket of buying credits we’d still be making that ancient iron block HEMI V8 that everybody loves… It’s super tough but the CEO, he burned our boats,” said Kuniskis.
Let’s Talk Rumors
We’ve quoted some of the rumors in the previous paragraphs, but there are plenty more. If you go to YouTube, you’ll find out from the creators mentioned in the intro that the departure of Kuniskis was apparently not an accident, but the work of the “evil” Carlos Tavares.
In short, they say that Carlos Tavares didn’t jive with Kuniskis and either forced him to leave or straight-up fired him. In long, the rift between the two men had been brewing for some time, some say. The fireside chat situation was the first clear point where Kuniskis not once but twice laid the death of the HEMI V8 on the shoulders of Tavares. Less than 90 days later, he retired without a word.
Does that sound like the kind of thing a person like Tim would do? I’ve spent a lot of time watching all the videos and conspiracy theories from the Mopar faithful and, I must admit, I’m starting to find it a little compelling. Perhaps it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but after hours and hours of viewing these videos, I feel like Kuniskis would more likely have had a public party on his last day and invited the Brotherhood to set up shop with its own personal Fast & Furious cosplay at Dodge headquarters.
On top of that, why would Kuniskis accept a role as head of the RAM brand in July of 2023 only to retire less than 12 months later? If he knew he was retiring wouldn’t he tell Stellantis that? Wouldn’t his role have then been something like interim CEO?
It took almost no time after these videos went up for Dodge fans to start coming out of the woodwork with rumors of things Kuniskis allegedly said in private settings. This one, the top comment from the video embedded above, might be the most on the nose.
“I know Tim in a professional way, have spoken with him monthly for the last several years. Back in December, I was talking to him and Ralph Gilles at an event, and Tim shook his head and said, “The electrics aren’t going to work, nobody wants them and we don’t have the infrastructure. None of us want to build them. It’s going to be like the housing bubble all over again.”
Again, this is a random person on the internet claiming these things. For all we know, it’s an actual princess of England just having a little fun in the comment section.
Nevertheless, according to the alleged source, Kuniskis went further:
“When it doesn’t work, the government is going to hold hearings and point fingers at us for forcing people to buy these cars we knew wouldn’t work, because the government doesn’t take the blame for anything. I’m not gonna’ be here when that happens.” Adding to that, Ralph smiled and said, “I don’t think any of us are going to be here for that!” So, watch for Ralph Gilles to be the next big card to fall.”
While that comment might be completely bogus, that same sentiment is everywhere across forums, comment sections, and other corners of the internet. “Was Kuniskis pushed out? After 30+ years with the company, an abrupt retirement like this feels more like a case of “retire or you’re fired” said one fan.
Several have posted their own videos online about this whole situation. The theories include stuff like Stellantis selling Dodge off to a Chinese company, Tim taking over Dodge again when Stellantis does sell it, Tim leaving because he thinks the new Charger is bound to fail, and more.
Then there are dealers openly saying things like: “Most all of the dealers understand the challenges you faced under the Stellantis corporate structure as we face many of the same challenges.” No doubt, anyone in a position like Kuniskis is going to face corporate pressure, but is this smoke just the Internet being the Internet or something more?
What Do Stellantis and Tim say?
Stellantis had very little to say about the matter other than naming the two people taking over for Tim. Tavares then went as far as to say “I want to take the opportunity to warmly thank Tim for his passion, commitment, and contributions to Stellantis and in defining the vision of the future electrified Ram and Dodge brands. I wish him well in his retirement.”
So granted, Carlos and Tim didn’t work together the entire time that the latter was at Stellantis, FCA, and Chrysler but still, over three decades of dedication and your boss wraps up his thanks in two measly sentences? I’ve literally thanked fast food workers I’ll never see again more profusely for getting my order right one time.
We’ve reached out to Stellantis about all of this. Is it aware of the rumors? Does it have any other info it can share to quiet them? Maybe they’ll tell us, but so far they have not responded.
What about Kuniskis, though? He’s said exactly nothing at this point. Technically, he remained in the role until June and has made no public statement about the change. Every time we turn a corner it seems to continue to point back at little potential seeds of truth within this conspiracy.
We’ve also reached out to Kuniksis on what we believe is his phone number, but haven’t heard back.
Could All of It Be True?
Sure, but technically lots of automotive conspiracy theories could be, despite being lightyears from even being close to legitimate. The main reason we’re writing about it is that we can’t think of any other situation where the retirement of an automotive executive created such a huge firestorm of online theorizing.
The thread of truth mentioned in some of the conspiracies is that Kuniskis openly admitted in that fireside chat that if his boss hadn’t mandated the death of the V8, he’d have tried to keep it around for longer. Add in the fact that Kuniskis hasn’t made a public statement about his decision to retire, mix in just a bit of fan theory, and boom, we have all the makings of a conspiracy.
At the same time, let’s not misunderstand who Tavares is. He may be focused on the bottom line, but Tavares loves speed and performance, too. He volunteered to be a track marshall at Estoril when he was a teenager. He’s participated in the Monte-Carlo Rally, classic Formula 3 racing, and owns a classic car restoration company. He says he’d turn down a meeting with a head of state if he had a race scheduled.
In addition, 32 years at any job is a long time. Retiring after all of those mostly successful years likely leaves him with a nice rainy-day fund as well. When people see organizational changes on the horizon, sometimes they choose to simply move on rather than fight the winds of change.
That’s not to say that Kuniskis won’t pop up somewhere else as some suggested. Ford is still happily making V8s and if not there, maybe he could spur the production of others somewhere else.
Of course, if Ralph Gilles “retires” in the next twelve months, you heard it here second.
Like I said, these are mostly just Dodge fans disappointed that Kuniskis is gone. Nobody at Stellantis has said anything about the departure being anything but amicable; still, while they may all be bunk, if anything, these conspiracy theories speak to just how strong of a brand he built for himself among diehard high-horsepower MOPAR fans.
Nobody with a long tenure at a place leaves like that without fanfare, this very much wasn’t a voluntary retirement. That much is for certain.
I’ve been to parties for people leaving after like 4 years that we all were really stoked/upset at, and old retirees usually got some banner stuff depending on the company.
This all sounds like late stage capitalism destroying yet another thing that was once pure and good and true.
Tavares a guy who shit the bed worse than any other regarding his mishandling of the Jeep brand chasing out another executive should suprise no one.
I keep harping on it but the fact that Jeep has no answer for the RAV4/CRV should be enough to get him out of the CEO role.
I’m not sure about actual numbers but based on the amount of em I see on the road the RAV4 must be one of the best selling vehicles on the road period and Jeep has crickets…
Tavares seems terrible at his job and was handing down mandates that Kuniskis didn’t agree with. Whether he was asked to leave or just pushed into it by clueless leadership is kind of irrelevant. As long as Tavares is in charge, Kuniskis was the wrong man for the job. We’ll see how long that Tavares situation lasts though, given the atrocious performance of the Stellantis brands across the board.
Getting out sounds like the best option for Tim regardless of why it happened. My bet is he lands on his feet somewhere else very soon.
I think the reality is, is that there was not much long-term planning going on inside Chrysler for the past ~15 years or so. The “horsepower wars” brought them some short term profits, but it seems like they really squandered that money instead of trying to build out a solid plan for the future.
The “Gen 3 Hemi” has been around for 21 years, and in that time span only saw one minor refresh to add VVT. In that same period, GM and Ford each have introduced 3+ entirely new V8 engine families to meet emissions and serve certain uses for the foreseeable future.
Chrysler has been continually failing to make the Pentastar family reliable. They’ve only recently introduced a 4-cylinder engine that wasn’t an existing Fiat engine or an old GEMA/World Gas Engine with some Fiat parts strapped on the top.
They have no good North American CUV or car platform. All of their “import” platform cars end up as failures.
The only things they put serious money into development were Ram Pickups, large Jeep SUVS, and superchargers.
An executive being “Retired’ involuntarily is not usual or a conspiracy. My guess is there was a discussion where it became clear his vision was not aligned with the overall vision. Something like “Electric sucks, why do I have to make electric cars, we need compliance credits and iron block V8s?!” “If you can’t make it work than I will find someone else who can.”
Kuniskis wasn’t alone in the direction to buy carbon credits. Marchionne famously asked the EPA if he could comply simply by buying credits. When they said yes, he said, “I’ll do that, then.”, and kept making boku bucks on Hemis and Hellcats. Compliance is government mandated and we should all be questioning the targets and the costs they’re driving into new cars. Not only monetary costs, but infrastructure, raw material extraction, and energy sources. But, how OEMs go about it can vary and that’s the big inflection point that we’re at right now. Build expensive EV’s at a loss that there isn’t enough market to support? Focus on hybrids at higher volume? Say “screw it” and build what the people want and just buy credits? Ultimately, the cost of all this compliance falls back on the consumer as the vehicles get continually more expensive and complex.
While all of what you said is true, what are the costs of ignoring the environmental damage caused by excess CO2, NOx, HC’s? We’re beginning to see it through more extreme weather events, increased home and property insurance costs, more people trying to emigrate to the US & Europe (whether you call these people climate refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and all the more insulting names that go along with that last one, food and clean water scarcity in more equatorial regions have always played a huge role in civil unrest, and that’s becoming more common due to changing climate and decreased crop yields). We don’t currently have a system that directly puts a value on damage to the environment or on the biggest contributors to climate change, but it is a government’s role and purview to look out for the long-term health and prosperity of its people, so we need to do something.
I used to be in the camp of every-little-bit counts against vehicles, even opting to have a hybrid jeep vs a regular gas.
When I was researching what kind of impact I was making going hybrid, I found something pretty shocking.
Your average car puts out 4.6 Tons of Co2 in a year.
A boeing 747 puts out 8 tons IN ONE HOUR.
We are pissing in the wind, and hindering our own economy by attacking the wrong industry.
I think you need to look at it in that case on an emission per person per 1000 miles traveled to understand the comparative impact. A 747 can carry 416-660 passengers, depending on configuration. Given the speed they travel at, it may not be that ridiculous. IDK. Would need to know how many miles and at what average speed the 4.6 ton is based on.
747s are largely retired and have been replaced by cleaner burning planes, and you measure aircraft by people miles per gallon. theyre way ahead of vehicles that way. most cars are carrying one person not 500. and i wouldnt worry about air travel too much longer. its getting so fucking hot planes and helicopters are having trouble taking off.
I don’t want to overshadow the fact that SOME of the cars are carrying 500 people.
That’s a very fair viewpoint to the other side of the coin. I agree that it needs to be managed, and has come so, so far in the last 50 years. At this point, we’re spending exponentially more money and resources to whittle away at the last bits of pollution and emissions. I’m for reducing emissions and recognize that the government has the role of directing/forcing that, but there is a point of diminishing returns that I have a gut feeling like we’re leaping past right now. As an automotive (ICE) enthusiast, it makes me really sad.
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
Hear me out:
By focusing on light duty transportation electrification, we ARE ignoring the environmental damage caused by CO2.
Less so HC, NOx, particulates, etc, but that is largely a solved problem for LDV. No, really. Pull the data and you’ll see. There’s a reason the air is so much easier to breathe on city street corners in the US than in Mexico or even Europe, despite our increased relative usage of combustion powered cars.
Check out the link above. Our World in Data is a terrific website for cutting through bullshit. The kind of cars people drive to work, the store, soccer practice, etc don’t even get to claim the whole 16% under “transportation”. They get about a third of it. Just 6%.
How much of the average person’s budget would it take to pay for an electric car? Is it more than 6%? Uh oh.
Every kWhr of fossil fuel combustion energy that we replace with solar or wind or nuclear saves us a kWhr’s worth of carbon. Every kWhr of gasoline combustion that we replace with electricity stored in batteries stimulates about 1.2kWhr of new electricity generation, and most of it is natural gas-fuelled, leaking about half the amount of carbon you just saved from not burning gasoline.
Yes, but just because we are focusing on light-duty transportation doesn’t also mean we are ignoring the energy generation sector, HD & air transport, and industry. Energy generation is reducing CO2 faster than LD in large part because the cost of solar has come down so rapidly (but also because coal was just SOOO bad of a baseline).
I’m a huge proponent for bio-based E-fuels (plus hybrids) as well, the solution is not going to be EVs for everyone. E-fuels in particular could be a great solution since they could be a drop-in exchange for corn ethanol in fuel, we have a liquid HC distribution network with tons of capacity already in place, they give immediate returns on existing in-use vehicles which is a big deal for cars, but a much bigger deal for planes and other assets that have lifespans measured in decades. They can also offer grid buffering, which is one of the biggest problems with renewables for energy generation. With solar as cheap as $0.10/kWhr to grid operators, excess capacity during the day over the summer can go into hydrolysis of water (or other up-and coming processes) to make H2, combined with C-intensive agricultural waste products (corn stalks, wheat chaff, other waste biomass), you’ve got the building blocks to make that methane or ethanol for turbines to burn for peak demand, at night, or over the winter where sunlight alone doesn’t cover demand.
However, we need to work on all of the above. For some segments of the CO2-generating population (both for personal use and for commercial fleet use where distances aren’t large, that involve lots of stop-and-go, and that return home to a base each night), BEVs can be the right answer and relatively easy to implement with the grid, gas distribution network, and technology we have now. But I agree with you, they shouldn’t be (and aren’t) the only solution.
Agreed on all points. Note over never tried to argue that fully electric vehicles shouldn’t exist. They should, and they should continue to be developed. I just believe we should be perfectly happy with the adoption progressing slowly and naturally over the next 50-100 years. That is more than enough.
If we want it to go faster, they way to stimulate that also happens to be the best way to reduce carbon output: provide cheap carbon free electricity on the open market. Tax carbon to do it. Print money to do it if you have to. All those batteries that endow electric cars with 300 miles of range and 95% of the time get driven 40 miles/day or less would be averting more carbon if they were connected to a grid with excess solar capacity, where they would run a full cycle every day.
but once those batteries are made theyre made. the production cost is only going to hit once. theyll save that carbon every single time theyre used.
I didn’t say anything about the carbon from battery manufacturing. That’s bonus carbon in addition to the leakage I mentioned.
Woah, that’s what Tavares actually looks like? I am so used to the joke pictures here that I legitimately had no idea who he was haha.
In the upper echelons of corporate politics, a sudden ‘retirement’ is simply polite code for ‘asked to go’.
Yeah, this doesn’t seem like a “conspiracy” to me so much as “the realities of working in a massive corporation”
So Tavares says to the blue collar worker that the work will be demanding and only performance counts. I’d like to see him hit some of his own targets on the assembly line working for one day, one week, 6 months. I despise CEO egos and instead of shareholder value the corporations should focus on stakeholder value.