Fiat Chrysler has announced that Doug Betts, who's been serving as Global Head of Quality for the past seven years, left the company on Tuesday to pursue other interests.
Betts was immediately replaced by development chief Mark Chernoby. In North America, Matthew Liddane will now lead Chrysler Group quality.
This comes one day after Fiat Chrysler's various brands performed poorly in the annual reliability rankings of Consumer Reports. Dodge, Ram, Jeep and Fiat occupy the bottom four spots of 28 brands ranked by the magazine. Chrysler was the company's highest-ranked brand at No. 22.
A company spokeswoman, Shawn Morgan, would not comment on any possible connection between Betts' departure and the rankings, however.
Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has shown little patience with executives whose performances fall short of expectations, having changed his top managers on a regular basis since taking control of the company in 2009.
Source: New York Times