whats worse is that everything they touch turns to turd too. jaguar, saab, etc are on a long list of brands tainted by US car companies

the only US car company with positive prospects is Tesla, its the only company run by people who don’t look like “businessman” clipart

american cars are strictly marketed at poor people now for a reason, everyone with financial mobility (save hardcore “i ain’t buyin no jap or kraut car!” rednecks) has moved on.

I have to agree for the most part, DCX really should have kept to certain themes, RWD but smaller… less funky looking (see Avenger as opposed to Charger) and a few other odds and ends.

“Give the people what they want and they will give what you need.” Apparently not enough of them want LX cars or trucks to cover the huge expenses they have. But I hope they can get a clue and maybe really look at the markets and take a hint.

Caliber is funky looking, that can be fixed, but isn’t small enough. A new Neon is called for.

The 300C, Charger and Magnum are cool but almost too big, heavy 4200lbs), and thirsty (you can get 25 MPG if you get the V6). Updating the LH platform as they did for the 1999 Charger Concept gave us a slicker, lighter, faster, and more fuel efficient.. what ever…

The new Sebring is a awkward, awful looking heap, the Avenger actually looks pretty cool (what the devil happened there?) One hope the Nassau Concepts design language helps fix that. Still want RWD or AWD for those cars. Both cars are, I think based on the Mitsubishi Galant again… not the Caliber which is actually based on the Lancer

Lay off the HEMIs some. Build more fuel efficient motors and seriously pursue Hybrids, remember the Citadel concept? AWD using electric motors on the front wheels and a, yep V8 to drive the rear.

Jeep… Not much to fix there except dropping the Compass. Stop trying to make the division so cosmopolitan and keep focus. The GC is a reasonable exception. The Commander is one too far and yet not far enough. Build the Rescue and the Gladiator and bring back the Comanche.

We could go on forever but the truth is, Chrysler has no mission and so no direction to pursue and so it is failing.

Name suggestion after so thought: “Another victim of the Germans.”

What’s really selling is what Chrysler (And Ford, for that matter) don’t have. A good Camry / Accord / Corolla / Civic competitor. What has Daimler/Chrysler brought to the party? Nothing, they killed the neon and brought in the Caliber? WTF? And to do battle with the Camry / Accord they bring bring two giant gas guzzling V8 powered monsters, The 300 and the Magnum? When they aren’t V8 powered they are underpowered, and lets face it, they are interesting to look at, but the 300 is basically just a square brick of a car with a lowered roof and a cool grille. And the Magnum well that’s a station wagon!

Now they are bringing out the new midsize line, The Sebring could have been great, but they tuned it all wrong. I haven’t heard yet about the Avenger. Still both cars appear to be based upon the Caliber, so the quality of both is suspect.

It seems GM is the only one of the big three that has finally dropped it’s ego, taken off the blinder, and started building the kind of high volume MONEY MAKING cars, crossovers, and trucks that people need and want.

Chrysler is failing because of it’s Management decisions, that can’t be said enough. It’s failing because of it’s German Corporate Ego, that’s can’t be said enough either, and in laymans terms what that all means is that it’s failing because it has no product. (minivans excluded, of course)

Never improving Dodge and Chrysler’s overall quality and reliability. When the merger came about, the public expected ‘American Mercedes’ and dreamed of reliable, long-life cars with high resale value but instead got the same stagnant products of poor quality that eventually drug the quality of Mercedes down. Too many people bought their products expecting a Mercedes and got torqued off when the quality was just like the old days at the Pentastar.

Dropping Plymouth. They needed a ‘econo-box’ entry-level’ division that competed with Chevy and Ford and when it killed Plymouth and tried to swing customers over to Chrysler, it backfired because of the costs. They could have made Plymouth into ‘econo-Saturn’.

Not developing a version of the 4.7 V8 (Dodge Truck engine) for the 300C with less torque, good fuel economy, and better distributed power band for acceleration and horsepower. You got either the underpowered 2.7 or 3.7 V6 for that heavy car or the overpowered, overpriced, gas guzzling hemi. No in-between engine. If an ‘in-between’ engine offering was available and priced in line, they would have sold even more vehicles and could have turned around to be a even bigger success.

When Mercedes is finally able to spin off Chrysler, here’s how they could do it?

Bring back the Imperial name, not as another car within the Chrysler brand, but as the new flagship luxury brand name with it’s own exquisite models. Chrysler to a GM owner was always viewed as being an uglier Oldsmobile and Ford owners viewed it as an uglier Mercury for those who couldn’t afford Cadillac or Lincoln. The Chrysler name was never held in high esteem in American luxury as Cadillac and Lincoln. Even Cadillac owners had some level of respect for Lincoln and Lincoln had some respect for Cadillac but both Cadillac and Lincoln owners snubbed their noses at Chrysler viewing them as inferior and never in their league.

Focus Chrysler to compete along the lines of Buick and Mazda (the eventual Mercury replacement for MErcury will be phazed out).

Make Dodge the performance division and truck division. Give Dodge a Tahoe/Expedition vehicle called Prospector (one of their more likable names for a high-end package on the old Dodge trucks) and a Suburban/Excursion vehicle called Power Wagon

Make Jeep the SUV and 4×4 division and offer them in the ‘very stripped’ line like old Jeep and the ‘upscale’ line like GMC and give Jeep a Tahoe/Expedition vehicle called Wagoneer and a Suburban/Excursion vehicle called Grand Wagoneer. A small pickup called Commander and a full size truck called Pioneer with the new trademark grill.

Bring back Plymouth as the ‘econo-box’.

Give the Chinese car it’s own brand name and let all the Pentastar dealers compete hard to sell it. This isn’t the first time Pentastar had badged foreign cars. The omni/horizon was actually Renault/Citroen cars Americanized and the LH cars (Intrepid, New Yorker, etc) was a Renault car that Chrysler snuck the parts out in the middle of the night from the Renault Ontario plant (to reverse engineer) after Renault sold the plant to Chrysler when Renault left the American market.

Daimler is the culprit here. I feel sorry for Chrysler. They had cool concepts and Daimler approves warmed over or totally different production versions. I agree with you other posters, Daimler basically raped Chrysler for its cash in the bank, now it wants to shove them out into the wild blue yonder to fend for itself while Mercedes is getting back into the black. See if I ever purchase another Daimler product….They suck anyway, I would take a BMW or Lexus anyday over those stodgy cars.

I would LOVE to see an independent come in and buy them out. Jerry Flint, are you listening?

Is that a joke?

Autonutt – By separating the brands its doesn’t mean that it will be successful. They still have the cancer called the UAW as the same as Ford/GM. By the time they sort the UAW out the chinese will be attacking from all angles together with the japanese and Koreans.

I kinda doubt it. You’ll see more four letter words than a first grade book report before this one passes.

But I’ll start anyway…

Chrysler-Dodge Group or CDG.