With gas prices high and Chrysler offering 10,000$+ rebates on their trucks, I'm thinking Chrysler/Dodge could be in serious trouble. It's purchase and subsequent sale by Mercedes didn't do it much good in terms of long term sustainability.
The problem is that Mercedes never "got" Chrysler. They did a coup by bringing back the Hemi V8 and creating modern full size RWD cars like the the Charger/300/Challenger/Magnum, but everything else was highly problematic. The replacing of the Ram Van with the Mercedes based Sprinter was an awful idea. The Sprinter is made for city driving on good roads, not for driving onto contruction sites and American contractor work. Another bad idea was the king cab Dodge Ram. Instead of having the suicide door arrangement of Ford and GM, they did a highly impractical four door thing. Good for a guy who only wants to put kids in the back, bad for everyone else. Then there's the problem of them designing new models that are almost salesproof. Stuff like the macho, but butt ugly Caliber and the extremely expensive and useless Chrysler Crossfire. What was the point of those again? Even the redesigns of cars like the Dodge Caravan are totally missing the point.
Let's not even get into the topic of Chrysler's extremely iffy quality and cheap materials.
What Chrysler needs right now is a good quality family sedan or nice low cost minivan for families, and a sexy sport compact for the kids.
Don't get me wrong, I love the new Challenger so much that I will own one someday. No if, ands or buts.
um, but... they might want to get into the business of building cars for people other than me.
I totally agree on all of the above.
Chrysler dealers down hear are almost giving them out .lol I saw a brand new Town and Country fully equipped for less than 21k . (Not that I want one lol)
red x.....oh and chrystler isn't the only one letting trucks go for $10k off my dad just picked up a 2008 3500 SRW duramax for $36k with. normally $47k
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danm return button.......
he traded in his ram 3500 srw due to it was on its 3rd turbo, 2nd head gasket and still under 40k mi. So he traded one headache for one, and traded in for a headache that I'll have to fix
if anything goes wrong.
I agree with everything but the part about wanting a Challenger. I'd rather ride a big wheel to work every day.
2010 Honda Fit LX
Pretty much. They need to totally redo their automotive offerings. Redesign the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Charger. The ram looks promising though. Looks like they might sell the Viper to somebody else to take over which I think is a bad idea since it is a halo car. Then there looking to outsource their mid size and small cars to Nissan, there goes a whole bunch of american jobs as well as a whole lot of Chrysler buyers as well. Chrysler has been screwed up for decades due to their penny pinching and not wanting to buy more expensive quality parts. What they need to do is make some award winning motors and transmissions and make their cars reliable and good looking. Back in the 90's they had the design thing down. The Challenger is a step in the right direction but it is way to heavy at 2 tons. If they could shave 500+lbs out of it and price it cheaper it would sell like the Mustang. Keep the Caliber but make a small sedan and coupe and offer a turbocharged SRT version coupe. There's alot of work to be done at Chrysler to make it a world class automaker again and hopefully cerberus will give them time to turn Chrysler around.
What Chrysler also needs is to be a class leader again. Back in the 80's it had minivans, in the 90's SUVs, I think it may do well to invest in
Leisure Activity Vehicles (AKA: Mini-Minivans) Basically it gives you the room of a mid-size car for the price and fuel economy of a sub-compact. Not a bad idea. Even without a fuel crisis a lot of people with families and small businesses would buy a less than 15,000$ van. Sell it in "pickup" layout and even I'd consider buying one.
Teaming up with Nissan isn't a bad idea. Nissan has some awesome small car platform, which Chrysler desperately needs. The problem is if they can make them pretty or not. That wouldn't have been a problem a few years ago, but it's a real albatross around their necks now.
One of the most crippling things Chrysler has lost is the innovative design team of the 90's. Which it had aquired when it bought AMC. American Motors was a crap company in a lot of respects, but it had extremely good designers. The Dakota, Neon, Viper, Ram and LH sedans were all (somewhat) originally meant to be AMC's or had their genesis in an AMC design. However, most of these guys either retired or jumped ship to Mercedes. So now Chrysler got nothing.
If I was Chrysler though, I'd sell try to ressurect American Motors. Stupid as it sounds, you could get a lot of sympathy sales if you marketed it as a '100% American owned and built" company. They also still own the rights to Rambler, Hudson, Nash, Eagle, Plymouth, DeSoto and Imperial. Why not sell 49% of it them off? I'm sure there's tons of Indian, Russian or Chinese companies out there desperate to get into US territory that would saw off a leg to get brand name recognition. Chrysler could demand final approval of any designs and in return the buyer could use Chrysler platforms and engines. Couldn't be worse than what we got now and would inject some much needed cash in the struggling automaker.
Another thing would be to either get rid of the
Chrysler make or figure out what it's supposed to be. Is it a luxury brand or what? If it is, it may be an idea to sell... you know... LUXURY cars through it. The Chrysler Sebring is NOT a luxury car, nor is the 300 for that matter. Both are just snootier version of their Dodge brothers.
Knoxfire wrote:If I was Chrysler though, I'd sell try to ressurect American Motors. Stupid as it sounds, you could get a lot of sympathy sales if you marketed it as a '100% American owned and built" company. They also still own the rights to Rambler, Hudson, Nash, Eagle, Plymouth, DeSoto and Imperial. Why not sell 49% of it them off? I'm sure there's tons of Indian, Russian or Chinese companies out there desperate to get into US territory that would saw off a leg to get brand name recognition. Chrysler could demand final approval of any designs and in return the buyer could use Chrysler platforms and engines. Couldn't be worse than what we got now and would inject some much needed cash in the struggling automaker.
Bad idea.
Auto making is a global operation not car can be 100% American. And the second Chrysler builds one AMC car, motor or transmission in Canada or Mexico, they disrespect the moniker of being "'100% American owned and built company".
They lie enough already, giving a regular V8 a brand name "Hemi", then marketing it like the second coming...when it's just a V8 with a catchy brand name. Or calling Jeeps trail rated, when there is no rating..."Trail Rated" is marketing catch phrase with no meaning. Just to name a few. They don't need to leave themselves any more open to speculation...especially like calling themselves "100% American owned and built" When you already know any AMC they would bring back would share components or a platform with a Mitsubishi or Benz.
And the last gamble they should take is bringing in the Chinese. By now we can agree nobody trusts Chinese quality. Be it lead paint, to diseased food, to “as seen on TV” cheaply made gadgets. I wouldn’t buy a Chinese car. And Chrysler would lose A LOT of money if the y did this and either nobody buys them…or they do buy them and they cost billions in warranty work and piss people off to the point that Chrysler is even more disliked. Helping bring a Chinese manufactuer was a great idea when the big 3 were doing well, they could afford some collateral damage if things went wrong. But not now. Nobody is strong enough to take a hit on them if their cars turn out to be junk.
It won’t happen.
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does anyone actually think chrysler can be turned around? they needed a government bailout 20-25 years ago and they pissed it away. even if the govt could afford to bail them out again, they sure as hell wouldnt. now that chrysler has been bought out, theyre pretty much SOL and on their own. theyll slowly die and be parted out and absorbed by other foreign automakers.
Believe it or not, the Government today is on slightly better footing than it was in the 80's when Chrysler needed a bail out last time. I think they needed $1 Billion back then.
Today though... If they get bailled out again, they're going to need a damned superstar car (I'm talking better made than the K-Cars, and cheaper than a Kia to make). Since Mercedes bought and sold them, I think they really did a number on the internal structure of Chrysler. They're basically going to have to start at square one, and rebuild, or get bought out and let the new owners figure it out.
The most pressing problem is simply that they need a good sub-compact and compact car. The Avenger sedan is fine, needs a better engine, but overall it's a decent bread and butter car. The LX sedans are also very good, and the Challenger is so amazing that I won't mourn the loss of the Viper. Truckwise, they're good, though the new Caravan looks like crap. Still, they're the last manufacturer selling minivans and I think that segment may get a boost from all the SUV owners jumping ship because of high gas prices,
What's particularly galling though is that Chrysler is making the same exact mistakes that AMC made just before they were bought out in 1987, by CHRYSLER no less. I won't bore you all with specifics but what ultimately killed AMC was that they went and dedicated all their budget to the Jeep division in an effort to only make extremely profitable vehicles rather than have a varied lineup that could weather a sudden change in people's buying habits. So when the marketplace did a U-turn in the late seventies towards more fuel efficient vehicles AMC found themselves without an economical car. The Pacer was to be their entry in that market but it was a lot more clever than good and ultimately ruined them because even by 1975 standards it was wayyyy behind the times. What they needed was a lightweight, front drive car with a small four. What they built was a squished mid-size rear driver with a 4.2 liter straight six. Not only that but the thing actually stole sales away from their profitable Gremlin so it was a complete loss across the board. Did I mention it was butt ugly?
Then, in desperation, they let themselves be bought out by Renault to get a much needed influx of cash. Renault, of course, didn't "get" AMC and saw themselves as having purchased several thousand dealerships to export their own cars to the US, rather than a car company that needed someone with a head on their shoulders at the helm. So they began selling Renault cars almost exclusively and since Renault was not known for quality back then (nor was AMC to be honest, but they weren't as bad as Renault) you can guess the outcome. By 1987 AMC was limping along with one last homegrown model, the Eagle (basically a Jeep Cherokee with an AMC Hornet wagon body bolted to the frame) and a bunch of Renault cars that nobody wanted. Eventually Chrysler bought them in order to get their design team and the Jeep division and mercifully put them down.
The funny part was that people kept babbling on about how AMC allowed it's sale to Chrysler to go through too early and if they'd only waited until the new
Medallion and
Premier came out they could have been saved. This is the biggest load of BS I have ever heard in my life, click on the links and go check it out for yourselves. The cars were bland and expensive. They would have been unsellable. Chrysler never managed to unload them and sold them only as long as they were contractually obligated.
I fear that eventually Chrysler will suffer the same fate. Historically they're heading down a similar road. The Caliber could be seen as a kind of Pacer, they went and spent all their money on trucks when the market is demanding fuel efficiency, they've been bought out by a european company not know for producing quality cars who mismanaged the hell out of them. It all sounds depressingly familiar.
Funny this topic came up.
When I was in class a couple nights ago my Accounting teacher was telling the class he didnt think Chrysler would be around another 3 years.
Did somebody compliment the Avenger ? It has an interior in the same class as a J, and a utterly boring power train.
My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
they are better off without the mercedes crap, they need to work on reliability, not mercedes strong point
1989 Turbo Trans Am #82, 2007 Cobalt SS G85
It was the Carter administration that help this struggling company with over one billion dollars. During a time that they did not have nothing fuel efficient and reliable they were losing BIG. The K-car saved them big time, then with Caravan continued on ward trend of Chrysler coming out of the water. Carter did this to save a american company and to keep people with a job and not let thousands of people left out on the streets and impacting the economy. Luckily everything worked out for the positive.
I truly believe that when it was the 90's Chrysler was at the top in recent times. Neon in 1994 was revolutionary for a econobox. Stratus had design lines that still stay fresh today, Intrepid had a futuristic design, Viper was immensely strong contender in the super car world. Caravan was best in class. Ram was the first with modernising the pick-up. After Mercedes bought it, it squeezed the Chrysler to a dry. I remember being in the 11th grade in history class making a speech on how bad of a idea that Mercedes bought Chrysler, and I remember specifically that my teacher said, that I was wrong and it was Chrysler's best move ever... as he said Mercedes is going to improve the company. Wish I could see him today and laugh at him. lol
I dunno but just see history repeating itself, and knowing Cerebus is holding Chrysler's on life support scares me even more. Time will only tell.
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-----The orginal Mr.Goodwrench on the JBO since 11/99-----
yup, chrysler had an awesome 90s lineup and mercedes drove them into the ground again
1989 Turbo Trans Am #82, 2007 Cobalt SS G85
First, all a hemi means is that it has hemispherical heads. whoo hoo.... Second, they could definately restyle the charger which I think looks ugly as hell, along with the magnum. A little more body work on the Neon could also be useful. I also think it would be a great idea to bring back AMC and one of there nicest cars, the AMX. On top of all that make Chrysler a luxury only maker with some power under the hood and they would be well on the way to making it a better company.
My two cents....
SpeedDemon (Steve) wrote:First, all a hemi means is that it has hemispherical heads. whoo hoo.... Second, they could definately restyle the charger which I think looks ugly as hell, along with the magnum. A little more body work on the Neon could also be useful. I also think it would be a great idea to bring back AMC and one of there nicest cars, the AMX. On top of all that make Chrysler a luxury only maker with some power under the hood and they would be well on the way to making it a better company.
My two cents....
Actually...from what i've read in a few Hot Rod magazines, AMC IS coming back.
anyone got a link to this supposed $10k off? only thing I see is the "upto 25% off" deal which is limited
In Canada, I've seen it on dealer stickers.
hmmm, maybe it's just a Canada promo? This would be enough to make me go buy that 300c I've been wanting.
It's applied weird. For example, you can get a brand new Dodge Ram ST Hemi for under 20,000$ with the rebate, which is cheaper than the cheapest Dakota. I think it's just a Dodge thing and especially for the Ram since they're changing to a new model for 2009 and need to unload their 2008s.
When your car sales are down when everyone else's are up. That's bad.
What makes it worst is that there are quite a few new cars in that party...
And judging by all the issues my brother has with his Caliber, it's not looking good......
