Imperial: an open letter

Olivier Francois
President and Chief Executive Officer – Chrysler Brand
Chrysler Group LLC
1000 Chrysler Drive
Auburn Hills, MI 48326-2766

Dear Mr. Francois:

The Imperial has been gone since 1983, but there now might be a window of opportunity for a profitable rebirth of Chrysler’s once-flagship marque.

With the end of the traditional rear-wheel-drive Town Car on the Panther platform coming in August of this year, Ford will no longer have a vehicle suitable for executive car or limousine use. Yesterday, Ford announced it would offer two livery versions of its slow-selling MKT, which is an upcontented version of the slow-selling Ford Flex, in the second quarter of 2012. The new vehicles will bear the Town Car badge. In other words, Ford will replace the traditional luxury sedan with a chauffeur-driven station wagon.

Reaction to the announcement was less than enthusiastic: the industry buzz is that livery fleet owners will begin looking elsewhere when it’s time to replace their existing Town Cars.

How about giving them a reason to look at Chrysler? The 300 has already been offered in a stretched version as the Executive Series. Some tweaked sheet metal or a new grille, extra space and amenities (like heated seats) in the rear passenger compartment and the beefed-up suspension and column shifter from the Charger police car. Ideally, there would be front and rear bench seats.

A clean diesel version should be able to meet New York City’s tough new mileage requirements and Chrysler just happens to have a source for diesels for the 300. Outside of New York, Chrysler’s standard engines would fill the bill nicely.

The result? The 2012 Chrysler Imperial executive car/limousine. It would make a much better impression on the clientele than a wagon with a driver. To top it off, the Chrysler Imperial could have a favorable price point compared to the foreseeable competition.

Is there a market? Ford sold 11,264 Lincoln Town Cars in 2010. Chrysler sold 37,116 300s and a total of 149,304 LX platform cars. New York City alone has more than 10,000 regulated “black cars” and that’s just one market. Los Angeles is another where a low-emissions, high EPA mileage vehicle could be attractive to livery service operators.

While it probably wouldn’t be a viable standalone brand, the Imperial as a prestige model would make a nice addition to the Chrysler brand and fit in well with the company’s desire to position Chrysler as a premium marque.

I realize there are many other issues that would need to be addressed to determine the feasibility and business case for a new model, but I think the circumstances make it worthy of consideration.

Best regards,

Bill Cawthon
Associate Editor
Allpar.com

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Patience, please!

People sometimes write to me and demand to know why Chrysler is so slow to adopt their favorite technology.

Much of the time, I agree that what they want is reasonable. Like diesel engines – I’d love to see diesels in the 200/Avenger or Wrangler or Ram 1500. Especially those VM Motori diesels they use in Europe, or, for the Ram, those new Cummins models that apparently only the U.S. Government is using.

But let’s take a quick look at Chrysler.

For nine years they suffered under Daimler’s “cut it, then cut it again, then cut it again” mentality. Then they went under Cerberus’ knife and even the Pentastar V6 nearly bought the farm — as far as I can tell, it was saved by press coverage.

So here’s what Chrysler is hurrying to get ready:

* Pentastar V6 Variants: direct injection, MDS, turbocharged, twin turbocharged, and possibly 3-liter high-mileage or economy versions
* New transmissions: nine speed and eight speed — apparently in just about every vehicle they make
* World Engine rebuild — as far as we can tell, essentially scrapping most of the top of the engine and starting over
* Federalized Fiat engines (1.4, 1.4 turbo)
* Power/efficiency upgrades for the Hemi V8s
* MultiAir implementation
* Viper V10 upgrades

It’s quite likely the engineers are also working on a V8 version of the Pentastar V6, as well — or at least some sort of replacement for the Hemi, to debut a few years down the road. No engine family lasts forever.

(As for MultiAir, it’s hard to tell how much of its implementation is political vs engineering, especially on the variable cam engines.)

At the same time, they’re working on all those new Fiat designs, replacing the compact cars, the midsized cars, the Liberty, the Journey… working on the minivan replacements for 2014… and presumably bringing over large vans and investigating class 6-8 trucks. That’s not to mention the Dakota replacement, Wrangler pickup, etc.

So if there’s no Wrangler diesel next year, I won’t be surprised, nor will I be upset. A decimated engineering crew joined by a large number of probably-inexperienced newcomers is doing amazing work, but they’re all still human. Give them time and be patient; between the engineering, debugging, testing, refinement, re-testing, and certification, these things take a lot of time and money. On the lighter side, we may be looking at several years of marked improvements — our reward for having to endure a decade of disappointments?