Chinese Hornets
And in the latest news, Chery and DCX officials have been talking about a small Chrysler-branded car to be sold everywhere but North America, replacing prior thoughts of Dodge Smarts.
Yes, China - fashionable and sleazy. Fashionable in that every business in the US apparently wants to move all its work there, ignoring any impact that might have on their country (rationalizing it in the name of globalism, or, ignoring India, assuming Americans will all have jobs programming computers or something) or the possibility that transferring state of the art technology to China - which would have to be done to sell a competitive car in Europe - might backfire. Korea? Nope, don’t remember Korea. Never happened.
What are the other possibilities for the Hornet? Mainly, Volkswagen, but frankly that’s a Good Old Boy network and nothing else. Yes, the Polo is a nice enough vehicle, but really … Volkswagen? The company with quality in the toilet? Their main asset other than a rather nice diesel engine and cool, expensive, small-but-powerful engines is Wolfgang Bernhard. We know he and Dieter get along nicely, but that’s no reason to foist a VW on Dodge; neither is the agreement to use VW engines in Caliber diesels, or to sell modified Chrysler minivans as Volkswagens.
Frankly, I think there is no reason Chrysler could not do this inhouse other than the merger-required layoff of so many engineers, and the lack of funds resulting from Mercedes burning everything up to keep their cluttered vehicle lines intact while they try desparately to earn a profit. Had it not been for the merger, we’ll remind readers who have forgotten, Chrysler would have had a $10 billion (at least) cash fund to get them through hard times without sacrifice, as well as the ever-profitable Chrysler Credit, which now pays its cash directly to DCX. The reporters usually forget about Chrysler Credit when giving the merger full credit for Chrysler’s current tepid success.
The small car could even be made on a budget by resurrectingn plans for the first-generation Neon, which was smaller and lighter than the second generation. Shrink it down and safety-it-up, and you have a good, light small car with great cornering, a fun feel, and surprising acceleration with the base 1.8 liter World Engine, which would give the Hornet best in class power (by a huge margin). It would not go up directly against the cheaper Yaris and Fit, but it would give them Fits, so to speak, by being so much better.
Let’s assume, though, that there’s no money to do that. There probably IS no money to do that, because, as previously noted, Mercedes needs to have dozens of different models and Maybach and Smart, and all lose money, and Mercedes is busy rebuilding everything so someday they might make a profit; and of course Chrysler is also investing in the Challenger, hybridization, diesel versions, six-speed automatics, a new small V6, new minivans, and new flexible factories. (The UAW might cough up a few billion in savings if given the choice of that and a new factory in China, to be fair, but only if someone asked them.)
If Chrylser ran the factory in China they could keep quality up. However, we’d be giving away both our human and manufacturing technology at that point, and that would be eventual slow suicide. Unless you think Chery would be less likely than Hyundai to invade home markets eventually.
Since we already know Chery is planning to enter the US market, I don’t see teaching them to build cars as being a good idea.
Mitsubishi is also an interesting target, if anyone there will return calls from DCX. MMC and Chrysler have worked together quite a bit, and they do make nice cars in the right class. Collaboration would be no problem for the engineers, even if the execs can’t stand each other any more, and that cool direct injection system could be used.
I have to wonder about Peugeot and Renault. Both have historical linnks with Chrysler, and Peugeot is used to working with other companies. Both produce quite good small cars and both used to sell in the US and do not any more. Of course they are not German so they are clearly inferior, but other than that, if I had my choice of partners around the world, I think it would be Peugeot, because they won’t compete with Chrylser anywhere but Europe.
I should mention that Peugeot incorporates SIMCA and Rootes, which were owned by Chrysler, while Renault owned AMC. I would not be surprised if a lot of the same people were there. But I think at some point a Mercedes-Volkswagen merger is likely, and at that point, they’ll be happier to have Polos sold in the US by Chrysler.
Overall, another “not quite as happy as it should be” moment. Actually competing in the Fit/Yaris space should be a given, but at this point it seems clear they’ll be going the “rebadge” route, and probably personal relationships will take precedence over long-term thinking. It’s a shame.
The only thing that makes me think that, maybe, it won’t be VW and Polo is that it *is* so obvious. Sometimes things seem so obvious that other alternatives are given short shrift.
My big concern is the quality issue with VW. I do think the possibility of CG doing a vehicle themselves lies somewhere between ’slim’ and ‘what are you, nuts?’. The most I think we’d see is a tweaked rebadge; lightly so. It’d be most interesting to see them court other partners though.
Well yes, every manufacturer wants to go to China, completely ignoring how this will impact the ability to secure energy resources for the USA. More factories in China means that China will be obtaining more oil to fuel them, forcing the market here to grow smaller, decreasing supply, driving up prices. The question is: why? Obviously, it drives up profits big time, and I seriously doubt if China closely monitors the environmental issues as the USA does. The government here seems to encourage the overseas movement of solid manufacturing jobs, oblivious to the fact that at some point there isn’t going to be enough jobs at McDonalds or Burger King for hamburger flippers. Not to mention that the cooking devices won’t be working anymore anyway because they can’t afford the fuel to cook the stuff!
China is acquiring technology at a prodigious rate. They are also not stupid people, cranking out more engineers than the rest of the world combined every year. What they don’t acquire, they WILL invent for themselves. There is a stubborn determination to the people there, keeping their society together far longer than any other civilzation on Earth. Within society, while they do comply with “laws” they function based upon relationships, and family is the rock. Eventually, with the ever increasing acquisition of freedoms, the Communist government will disappear. Last year alone, the gov’t battled some 8,000 uprisings, including whole villages of people, according to the World Freedom Congress which has some people on the ground over there. Not a job I would want.
We just had a nice article about the China produced Chrysler mini-van. It has a slightly different look, and some on the forum praised it as being stylishly better than we have available here. Quality wise, well, making an assumption, it should be as good as the USA units. So, why now do we pan the possibly of a smart car being built there? I could be wrong, however, given the continuous losses upwards of billions of dollars on the Smart project, perhaps DCX is seeking a means to make money with it, providing that it SELLS. The Hornet appears to be a much more stylish vehicle, and certainly judging by the reactions here, highly desireable, whereas it does seem that the Smart has become “damaged goods.” One of the issues, of course, is that the Chrysler Group is NOT an American company. It’s fortunes, and it’s futures are based upon an outfit that seeks global domination, without too much regard to the specific interests of the USA. Everyone seems to have a soft spot for Dieter Zuetsch, but in reality, when the push comes to a shove, he will do what is necessary to insure the survival of Daimler, even if it means a Chinese built Smart, Hornet, or acquisition of VW to build other
Chrysler badged vehicles. That should have become very clear when DCX resorted to using vehicle names of highly visible and well respected Chrysler Corporation such as “Charger” on a 4 door platform. Further taking it out to the Super Bee which is loaded up at 38 grand, when in fact the original was an inexpensive 2 door sedan car built for high performance.
Quality being the theme, shall we not forget that Chrysler wasn’t so hot, and that issue still hasn’t been resolved in a lot of people’s minds yet. Certainly they appear to be better, right on a par with the stuff being offered by Ford and GM but the final tally isn’t in yet. Peugoet is not on the recognition scale here. The most famous one that I can think of was the beat up convertible that Peter Falk used to drive in his TV series “COLUMBO.” Probably a decent automobile, but who knows how they would be received here. Chrysler didn’t have such a good time with Simca or Rootes either. Mitsubishie was their best partnership, and that angle should have never been let go. MMC builds good cars/trucks/vans with reliable engines, and all the running gear. That is what should have been played up, scandels, like gov’t officials, come and go.