Allpar posts 2008 Challenger SRT8 test drive

Thanks to Jim Choate for this one. From all we’ve heard, the Challenger is a real winner… especially now that it turns out the SE model (with the V6) has both decent acceleration and a good price.

Out of the frying pan

I ran across this guest editorial recently, from around 2000, I believe. It was one of the early indicators of Daimler’s way of working, and was written by an anonymous employee.

One of the more innovative things about the old Chrysler was that we were one of the first auto companies to have satellite hook-ups at every facility (thus video-conferencing). There was an employee “news” show on an internal network called CEN (Chrysler Employee Network). This was a great service because it kept everyone abreast on industry news, and it reported the good, bad, and ugly within the company, not just propaganda. With the coming of Daimler, CEN disappeared.

The replacement for CEN is called DCTV. It mostly runs video of old Mercedes cars competing in open-wheel race events. Other fare includes videos showing our glorious Truck, Bus, Train and Plane operations overseas. (They’re all money losers). We see news blips, but only if they’re positive. If four vice-presidents left DCX for Ford and GM within 3 months, I doubt if I’d be bragging about it either.

No more reviews of competitors vehicles, no more industry news, no feeds from other facilities showing improvements to be implemented elsewhere. That was CEN.

A few months ago we were subjected to a near constant video extolling the virtues of the “Smart” mini-car. This was to be the future of city transport. They have not mentioned that just yesterday production schedules were cut from 140,000 to 100,000 and finally to 80,000. At these sales numbers, one has to wonder what the “break-even” point was.

I had to learn this info from a trade magazine.