Chrysler falls to #12
Chrysler Corporation in 1998 was ranked among the world’s largest automakers, though most of its sales were within North America (around 200,000 sales were outside the U.S., Canada, and Mexico).
For the first six months of 2008, Chrysler was #12. Toyota has a comfortable lead in the top spot, followed by GM, then Volkswagen, and then Ford.
Suzuki, a minor presence at best in the United States, made more vehicles than Chrysler, in the first six months of 2008.
Given that Chrysler was on an upward trend in profits and vehicle desirability, in both cars and trucks, before Daimler arrived with promises of international sales, expensive technologies, and bags of cash for hard times, the blame can be laid less on Chrysler’s foresight and more on Daimler’s abuse of a once great institution.
Lest we forget, Chrysler saved many lives during World War II by engineering and building highly reliable tanks - making its quota nearly every month, and in many months making up for the production deficits of other companies - as well as increasing the reliability of aircraft engines. They did all this while giving rebate checks to the government when they spent less than they expected to. That’s not even mentioning their contributions to the atomic bomb and rocketry.
Now is the time for investment in the future - the kinds of investments made in the early 1990s, which resulted in the 1993-98 renaissance of Chrysler Corporation. Does Cerberus have what it takes, or will they be happy to have Chrysler a niche player, pretending to be a full-line automaker by restyling other manufacturers’ cars? Will Chrysler be allowed to play to its strengths, or will it buy engines and transmissions from others?
Only time will tell.
Just a small note. If it were not for Chrysler Engineers, there would not have an engine built in enough time to have powered the B-29 Super Fortress. Under normal conditions, the Wright Aeronautical 18 Cylinder Radial would not have been ready to begin any sort of production efforts until 1946, at the outside of conditions at the best. In January 1942, some 30 days after the USA declaration of war, the War Department tasked Chrysler with building the yet not even completed 18 Cylinder engine. The War Department also demanded that the manufacturing plant had to be in Chicago or Milwaukee. Neither location had any facility available that would encompass the scale of production, as proposed, for 1,000 engines a month! Imagine then, shortly after acceptance, that your top engineers flew to Wright facilities in Paterson New Jersey, they found only ONE engine! After years of internal development, commencing in 1936! And this ONE engine had completed only 30% of its first tests, leaving its durability, or production capability, well into dubious doubt. From scratch. Nothing. Zip. Chrysler built a huge facility, battled as hard as fighting an enemy to procure the necessary machine tools, ran head long into information withheld about design deficiencies known by the Army Air Forces, and was able to start production in March 1943. Just 9 months after final design of the huge plant was approved. It was the only engine production facility that took raw pigs of steel, aluminum, and magnesium in one end of the plant, and shipped fully completed, tested, ready to run, 2,200 horsepower Cyclones directly to Boeing Aircraft.
Time after time, Chrysler not only met expectations, it dramatically exceeded them. As well, through assembly line, machine tool, or engineering changes, it made substantial cost reductions in ALL of its war contracts. In the case of the Wright Cyclone, within a few months, Chrysler innovations, had cut the cost to the US Tax Payer by 50%! Money returned to the government BTW, which Chrysler could just as well kept, but thanks to the leadership of L.L. Colbert, in charge of the huge facility, and K.T. Keller, head of Chrysler, it gave it all back.
Where is this Chrysler? That, along with the Chrysler of 1993-1998, would just simply kick butt in the automotive world. The key lies within the halls of Cerberus, and their will to look the current adverse conditions right in the eyes, and give the go ahead. “Git ‘er dun!”
… though to do that, they’d have to start hiring instead of firing.
Again, what’s the point of having billions of dollars to your name if you never spend them? Where is the “patriotism” of Steve Feinberg, a man whose wealth is insane, now?
No, I’m not saying those with money should be FORCED into spending it on public works, but if you’re gonna claim to be patriotic, let’s see some evidence of it, not just more cuts.
Technically, Ford had even dropped further, to #5 if we include the 25% stake of Russian carmaker AvtoVaz (well known under the name of Lada worldwide) then Renault-Nissan taked in late 2007 according to this French article http://www.leblogauto.com/2007/12/lalliance-avec-avtovaz-propulse-renault-dans-le-gotha-international.html
I agree with Dave, let’s start hiring or even re-hiring the right people who was before the merger like Francois Castaing but we could show the door to Trevor Creed.
I don’t know Dave, what is it then that you would expect them to do right now? With the bucket of Lemons handed them by the former German owners, the need to make lemonade is quite obvious. But, do you begin by getting a bucket, peeling the lemons , or buy bags of sugar. I was, referring to a much earlier time, when it meant something to do your duty. No, in fact, it was EXPECTED to do your duty. I have no idea what this current rendition of what is named “Chrysler” intends to do, or how they intend to do it. So far, all I have seen is a lot of cuts, and a lot of hot talk. As far as spending it on public works, who controls that? Right now, it is a pretty hard effort to be swimming against the tide of economic downturn, besides having to try to right a whole gamut of ills left from a previous poor management plan.
Where is the modern day LH cars in this “Gas crisis”? Yeah, in a sense the LX is a RWD LH. But we need FWD LX cars to increase MPGS!
Tighten there friendship with Volkswagen.
Curtis, I’d expect them to do what they’re doing, because as you say, their talk is mainly hot air. I’d hope they’d take some of that massive wealth and put it into making Chrysler fully functional again, instead of constantly trimming and outsourcing.
I agree its time to see some innovation from this company again. 1993-1998 was a great time and it was all because of innovative design, neat features, good product and cost effective manufacturing.
I just wish they would stop partnering and try doing something on their own, or they could end up going the way of Rover.
Nick, I agree that in the long run it is better for Chrysler to develop all their own vehicles instead of partnering, but it order to get through the next few years while development of small, fuel-efficient vehicles occurs, partnering with Nissan for small cars is probably the best bet.