While visiting Brazil recently, Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told president Dilma Rousseff the automaker would spend an extra US$4.5bn in her country in 2013-2016, much of it to relaunch the Jeep brand.

Added to ongoing investments, the tally is now $7.5bn across Fiat (cars and light commercials), Iveco (medium and heavy lorries), CNH (agricultural machinery), Magneti Marelli and Teksid (auto parts and services), as well as engine factories.

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Fiat Group currently employs almost 50,000 people in Brazil and will be hiring 7,700 more in the same period. Most of the spend is for the new, 250,000-unit vehicle plant in Goiana in the north eastern state of Pernambuco, a less developed region, yet growing faster than the country average. 

Opening is planned for the second half of 2014 but a six-month delay is likely due to logistic difficulties and labour recruitment issues. Fiat’s oldest plant – in the state of Minas Gerais – will also see more investment. Future capacity will be 10 times that at the opening in 1976. The plant will be enlarged 10% with capacity of 950,000 units versus 800,000 now.

Fiat’s plans for the new Goiana plant are ambitious. just-auto has, exclusively, seen the start of production (SOP) timeline with sales commencing three months after SOP, as customary. As expected, production will include Jeep models as well as Fiat. Jeep was originally built in Brazil by a local unit of Willys-Overland and, from 1957 to 1983, by a Ford subsidiary.

Here’s how the plan looks:

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  • January 2015: SUV compact (Project 338) and medium-size pick-up (Project 226), the latter based on the same medium-compact architecture that underpins the [Dodge Dart-based] Fiat Viaggio saloon (made and sold in China)
  • December 2015: Two Jeep models: a SUV compact derived from Fiat’s 338 (renamed Project 530 for Brazil) and another SUV compact-medium (Project 546), this one based on the Project 226 medium-size pick-up
  • January 2016: SUV compact-medium (Project XSU) based on Jeep’s Project 546.
  • May 2016: At last, the compact-medium Viaggio saloon (Project 343) begins production, built on the versatile, new architecture shared with the Dodge Dart and Chinese Fiat Viaggio

Fiat has ruled out the Chrysler and Dodge brands for the six planned vehicles (four SUVs, a pick-up and a saloon) due solely to the strong image the Jeep brand already enjoys in Brazil.

The timeframe seen by just-auto includes a second-generation Viaggio with an SOP of May 2019.