Atop Stellantis North American headquarters, presiding over Auburn Hills as a testament to the storied automotive history of the metro Detroit region, is a five-pointed logo called the Pentastar.
The same logo sits in ornamental fashion on the hood of Devin Sykes’ daily driver, a 1987 Plymouth Gran Fury.
“It’s a car that was built during the (former Chrysler CEO Lee) Iacocca era, and he really brought back like the corporate badge, the Pentastar, and it’s just all over the car,” Sykes said.
So when Sykes, an electric vehicle engineer at Stellantis, drove his car to work at Stellantis HQ, he parked with a little bit of pride in a preferred parking spot reserved for Stellantis-family vehicles.
But after work, Sykes told the Detroit Free Press, “There was a ticket on my windshield, and the first thing I did was laugh out loud.”
Sykes was ticketed for parking a competitor’s vehicle in a company-car spot — a practice in place at most automotive HQs. The problem here is that Plymouth is, indeed, among the historical Stellantis family of brands — founded by Walter Chrysler himself in 1928 before folding in 2001. Stellantis itself is a conglomerate of automotive companies that includes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram.
Sykes’ ticket was resolved instantly. He said he spoke to a security director the next morning who did not even enter the ticket into the computer system.
“I knocked on the door (of the security team’s room), and a guy popped out, and I just said, ‘Hey, are you the person I contest parking tickets with?'” Sykes recalled. “He didn’t really say anything, and I handed him the ticket. He looked down at it, and he just said, ‘Plymouth.’ “
Sykes said the man had a wry smile on his face, and nobody hassled anyone.
But Sykes’ story is not an isolated incident of parking frustrations taking place at Stellantis’ headquarters. In January, the international automaker announced it would be calling all of its employees back to work, with North American workers being asked to return to full-time, in-office work by the end of March.
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During the gap between the pandemic and now, Stellantis went on a hiring spree. As a part of what the company is calling an “operational realignment,” it has hired about 2,000 engineers in recent months. With thousands of new and former employees coming back to daily work in the office, parking on the sprawling campus has become a bit thorny. Employees returning to the office have taken to online forums to voice their frustration over Stellantis’ competitive vehicle parking rules, which stipulate that only Stellantis vehicles can take convenient parking spaces on the automaker’s property.
The rule is not new, nor is it abnormal. Stellantis officials, when asked about the uproar over the “tickets,” said the rules are the rules. The tickets, to be sure, don’t come with a fee and are essentially just warnings issued by the security team at Stellantis.
“It’s been the policy for a long time, and I’m sure a lot of people were hired over COVID,” Sykes said about the parking rules, adding that the signs designating which spots are for competitive vehicles might be hard to spot in a big vehicle, or if it’s your first time driving around the campus.
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Old Detroit service station to become DIY garage
Devin Sykes plans to start a new do-it-yourself garage at this old service station on Mack Avenue. Photo taken on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Sykes, a longtime gearhead who has driven many a quirky vehicle, was recently featured in the Free Press for a project he has undertaken to restore an old service garage on Detroit’s east side into a self-service maintenance center.
Sykes said the coverage has drawn supporters out to his cause, including a few kind souls who reached out to offer donations of tools, equipment and money for his rehabilitation project. For that, he is extremely grateful.
“I’m excited about how many people want to act, like how many people want to help,” Sykes said.
If only he had a parking ticket to pay off.
Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and the UAW for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Stellantis engineer ticketed for parking Plymouth at former Chrysler HQ