Stellantis Sells the Plant That Built the Last Challenger to an Armored-Vehicle Maker
Canadian defense firm Roshel is buying Brampton Assembly, idle since December 2023, after Stellantis moved its planned Jeep Compass work to Illinois.
Stellantis is selling the Ontario factory that built the last Hemi-powered Dodge Challenger, and the buyer isn't another automaker. Roshel, a Canadian maker of armored vehicles, signed an asset purchase agreement for Brampton Assembly on Nov. 9. Neither side disclosed the price, and the deal is expected to close by the end of 2026.
For American buyers, Brampton is where an era ended. The plant built the Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger, and Chrysler 300 until December 2023, when the final Challenger and the last 300C left the line. The current Charger, the car at the center of Dodge's renewed bet on gasoline power, comes from Windsor Assembly, Stellantis' other Ontario car plant.
The automaker says the sale fits FaSTLAne 2030, its plan to manage its factory footprint more tightly and run its North American plants at about 80% of capacity by 2030. Alongside the sale, the two companies set up a framework to explore defense-industry projects together, from vehicle technology to related services.
Roshel is based in Brampton and builds MRAPs, armored personnel carriers, medevac, and counter-drone vehicles. It says more than 2,500 of its vehicles are in service in Ukraine. Founder and CEO Roman Shimonov wants to turn the site into an advanced-manufacturing hub serving Canada and allied export markets, but Roshel hasn't said how many people it plans to hire there.
The Jeep that went south instead
Brampton wasn't supposed to end up here. Under the 2023 contract with Unifor, the plant was due to be retooled for the next Jeep Compass. That work was paused in early 2025 after the U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian-built vehicles. In October 2025, Stellantis announced a $13 billion U.S. investment plan that includes more than $600 million to reopen Belvidere Assembly in Illinois for the Jeep Cherokee and Compass, with production expected to start in 2027.
That left more than 2,200 Brampton workers on layoff. CEO Antonio Filosa says that after three years of paid layoff, the company is still committed to a “fair resolution” with Unifor, and Stellantis says it is ready to negotiate a settlement for union members. Unifor calls the sale a betrayal and argues it breaks both the collective agreement and the commitments Stellantis made to Canada's federal government.
Stellantis isn't leaving Canada. It says it employs more than 10,000 people in the country outside Brampton, including at Windsor Assembly, the Etobicoke casting plant, and its Windsor research center. Windsor still builds the Charger, the basis for the limited-run Mopar '27 package.
What's next: the deal still needs government and regulatory approvals, and Canada's industry minister has called a meeting with Stellantis, Unifor, and the Ontario government. For Stellantis' U.S. operation, now under new Jeep and Ram chief Pablo Di Si, the sale removes an idle car plant from the books as Jeep production moves south.
