Write up your repairs, please

We’re trying to feature at least one repair article every week. Do you have one to contribute? We’ve got Monday’s ready but sometime next week we’ll need to have another for the following week.

Here’s a preview of what you’ll see on Monday.

Inventories still swollen

Though the Big Three have tried to cut back their inventories, a sudden economic squeeze (one could argue that through reckless spending and poor investment choices, it’s been building for years) has thrown sales off kilter, sabotaging efforts in an industry with long lead times. GM, Ford, and Chrysler would probably much rather be able to slash truck production right now; but contracts and other arrangements don’t allow for such sudden movements.

Chrysler remains one of the worst off in stockpiling; the Jeep Wrangler was very hot, and suddenly demand disappeared, leaving Jeep with the fifth highest inventory in the industry (according to Automotive News, as are all other figures cited here). Of mainstream brands, only GMC is worse, by a single day of supply. But Jeep’s average 106 days’ supply is nothing compared with the stock of pickups. There are 107,700 Rams floating around out there, good enough to support Chrysler for 160 days should they stop production right now. That’s a worry with the 2009s coming soon, but Ford and GM have their own troubles. The Silverado is in relatively good shape - more are out there but sales are higher so the total supply is just 117 days. The F-series has 215,000 copies out there - a 133 day supply. Toyota’s Tundra is not reported separately but Toyota trucks overall have just a 100 day supply - and there are 225,000 of them on lots.

Chrysler’s biggest “days’ supply” problems, aside from Rams, come from vehicles with relatively low stockpiles - the Pacifica (5,100 for around 400 days’ worth), Crossfire (1,300 of them), Nitro (15,400), and Aspen (8,600). The minivans are interesting to see - the Dodge version has a 42-day supply, the Chrysler a 96-day supply, as the market apparently changed gears suddenly and decided it wanted the Dodge. I suspect this is due to the perception that the Dodge is cheaper.

The LX cars are looking surprisingly good in days’ supply, other than the 300. Likewise, there’s just a month’s worth of PTs out there as production was switched to the Journey, which with 71 days’ supply, is no longer looking as though it has the bright future execs clearly assumed it would - it was meant to be Chrysler’s European entry vehicle, but unless the diesel-AMT version is much cooler than the gas-automatic version, it doesn’t look as though it’ll gain the traction it needs to justify dedicating Toluca to it. At this point, Chrysler would be better served by putting the minivan captains’ chairs back into the PT, putting the old air dam back on, and trying to get people to desire it more - again. (Throwing that 180 hp engine around more wouldn’t hurt, either.)

As for Jeep, it’s bad news everywhere but for the Patriot, which is probably benefitting from gas prices and financial squeezes. The Commander could stop production now and still last for around six months, the Grand Cherokee could go on for three months, and the Liberty and Wrangler are both at around 130 days’ supply. We don’t know if the Wrangler-based pickup will be pushed forward, because they need to do something with that assembly line, or whether it will be dropped as the manual transmissions are reportedly being dropped (according to the jk forums), to save money.

Daimler put their emphasis on the Chrysler brand, positioning it rather like Chevrolet, Ford, or Toyota. That appears now to have been a mistake. If I were to operate without market research, I’d say that Chrysler is probably positioned in most people’s minds in one of two ways: as a troubled automaker that was bailed out repeatedly and changed hands like Jeep, or as a formerly upmarket brand that never quite made it into luxury. Dodge appears to have a more solid rep as the everyman brand. Daimler’s attempts to essentially rename Plymouth have, I think, failed dismally. They would have been better off dropping Chrysler than dropping Plymouth, because if Plymouth did not have much in the way of connotations for the average younger buyer - or many older buyers - at least it did not have a lot of the negative baggage of Chrysler. (Also, it would make our job easier, because we could refer to “Chryslers” as “Dodge, Jeep, and Plymouth” without confusing people with the brand.)

Yes, I say it’s time for Plymouth to return. I know it’s expensive. I know it means sacrifice (though some more investment from the people who have more money than they could EVER spend would be helpful about now. Talk about patriotism is cheap - put your money where your mouths are, Steve and Bob.) But this is the time for down-to-earth, sold, frugal, and value-based auto investment by the average buyer, and that’s what Plymouth has always stood for.