The departure of Carlos Tavares from the automotive giant he helped create follows his inability to move on from previously successful strategies when faced with new, shifting challenges.

The Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram retailers watched pricey and older cars pile up on their lots this year, and felt Carlos Tavares wasn't listening.

The carmaker said it hopes to conclude a hunt for Tavares’ replacement by the first half of 2025. In the meantime, John Elkann, Stellantis chairman and CEO of its largest shareholder Exor, will lead a new interim executive committee.

Carlos Tavares, who had been under fire and was expected to leave at the end of his contract, resigned abruptly on Sunday.

Until a new CEO is hired, the company will be led by an interim executive committee chaired by John Elkann. Elkann, the great-great-grandson of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, is Stellantis's chairman and the CEO of the automaker's largest shareholder, the Agnelli family investment vehicle Exor NV.

Stellantis Chief Executive Carlos Tavares has resigned, the automaker said on Sunday, adding it aimed to find a new head in the first half of 2025.

Carlos Tavares is stepping down as Chief Executive Officer of Stellantis, effective immediately, following a sharp decline in the carmaker’s sales. As the Wall Street Journal notes, in July, the company reported that its net profit for the first half of the year had dropped by 48 percent compared to 2023.

Stellantis stock lost a further 6% Monday. Despite the challenges, Stellantis’s board had given Tavares its unanimous backing to turn the automaker around as recently as October. Since then, his renewed pursuit of cost savings and other efficiencies inflamed already fractious relations with dealers,