yay 1st post. Ouch, nothing like having your dirty laundry exposed to world. It’s one thing for others to say you quality is sub par, but to get busted saying it about yourself is big news. Once it hits the news outlets, it’ll give Chrysler another blow

This is BS. There is no excuse for greenlighting those cars and then saying after that you had no idea they would tank in the market. What’s next…hey, who authorized the Jeep Compass to hit the streets looking like it does?

Realistically the person who should be taking the flak is chrysler’s head of design seeing as he has to sign the design’s off before they can enter production.

i dont see any passion in any of DCX vehicles, they all suck

Also agreed. I find the Nitro interesting to look at on the outside, but certainly not the Sebring. Styling for the Sebring was taken from the Crossfire and the Airflite concept car - and seeing as the Crossfire was a big sales flop and the Airflite wasn’t THAT well received anyway, it should have been obvious from the outset that the public wasn’t digging Chrysler’s styling cues.

Then to dumb down those styling cues (from Airflite to Sebring) was further insulting. I thing the Sebring would have been fine to look at had they done a better job grafting on the front and rear end from the Airflite (with the scallop on the inside front lights and the sharper well-defined taillights).

The design of the roofline / rear door cuts shouldn’t have made it past initial design stages, howerver. It’s absolutely, totally hideous. It’s an awful, haphazard design resolution for the look they had wanted.

Everything will be better under new ownership. Daimler was a crappy babysitter.

Oh, and the interiors! So “Chrysler misjudged what the competition would offer in terms of interior quality” ???? Were they expecting the competition to reach back into the 80’s, as it appears that’s what Chrysler did with the Sebring / Avenger?

I checked out both cars at the Canadian Auto show and was shocked at the sea of gray rubbermaid material. By FAR the Avenger and Sebring had the worst interiors of any car there. I’d put those interiors on par with Hyundai’s Accent and Suzuki’s Aerio.
The design itself is nice in both DCX cars, but the execution, quality of materials, and colour selection is way behind lesser offerings from everyone else.

I know *one* person who likes the Sebring sedan.

But seriously, the profile of the Sebring should have never left the drawing board. What were they thinking with those hideous doors and that fake quarter window / black plastic wedge? The front of the car is pretty nice (imho the Crossfire didn’t sell only because it was waayyyyyyyyy too expensive and underpowered).

They didn’t care about the car looked, all they cared about was that it has heated and cooled CUP HOLDERS, according to the ADS

Pathetic… but in the least they recognize that they aren’t competitive at all. I hate how they always defend their crap products or blame their losses on anything except for themselves.

Has anyone noticed that all of the Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep interiors of the recent models are all made of the same material and same colors, no matter whether you’re paying for $14K Dodge Caliber or a $44K Chrysler Aspen? I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks their interiors are bad. I think the only thing worse out there now is the Ford Focus’s interior. We can’t even say it’s sub-Korean because those cars all least seem to have some aesthetic sensibility as far as textures and design go.
I’ve mentioned before that the ‘designers’ at Chrysler these days seem to have only a T-square at their disposal. These vehicles are at the bottom of the barrel as far as the interiors go.

Sebring was a huge mistake…can not even be mentioned as a true competior for Accord, Camry and Aura…I have no Idea who would sign off on the styling

Likely there are a couple of factions within Chrysler who had different concepts/designs for one of their bread and butter sedans. The faction with the crappier idea won with the accountants, the market rightly ignored the crappy car and now the other faction is having their say. Chrysler brass trusted the wrong idea people and now they’re upset at themselves about it.

They had a good thing in their Crossfire coupe. They didn’t refine it enough but it was a good, unique design. Maybe not a great driver’s car but it looked very good. Now they’re copying that same design into another car and it just doesn’t work at all.

As for the Nitro…. I really don’t understand why they keep building faux-4WD Jeepsters. Chrysler already owns the Jeep company which sells real four wheel drive truckish vehicles.

It’s very hard to understand a company’s philosophy or design direction when they are in such a difficult state. Benz just let them go so… I guess screwups like this are to be expected. It takes years to plan a vehicle lineup after all.

LIER…LIER…HOW COME THEY ONLY GET UPSET WHEN THE PRODUCTS ARE OUT FOR A WHILE…WHERE WERE THEY DURING THE DESIGN PROCESS??? COMPANY PAID VACATIONS??

OOPS….WRONG SPELLINGS!!

rented both, hated both. totally crappy than a hyundai and nowhere close to our 07 accord. im scared to drive a nitro. just scared.

Misjudged? Didn’t they have 2+ years to look at and evaluate a Ford Fusion? and why not peek at the segment leading Camry? Maybe they benchmarked a Malibu for the interior because it is the cheapest mid-size car on the market?

Nothing wrong with taking a risk with design. I think the real issue here is the execution. Most reviews were indifferent on the overall design, but the interiors got an overwhelming beating.

As much as you would think the outside is all the matters to most people, the interior can make or break a car. Just look at the 1999 Passat, which was a nice car, but mostly got praise for its high quality interior. The car went from also-ran to frontrunner in less than a year.

How about the fact that if you don’t get a leather interior in the 300 and Charger, you’re stuck with reallllly low rent cheap looking fabric (grey of course).
Whatever happened to nice fabrics? Not everyone wants leather. They figure if they make the base interior nasty, you will have to get the leather…. how stupid.
Years ago, you could get a nice interior in cloth with a nice cordoroy or velvet-like material…in tasteful rich colors.
NOW EVERYTHING is this freakin monotone grey or beige burlap….grey…grey….grey…enough already with the freakin grey.

And what’s up with the seats in the Sebring/Avenger?
They’re so damn NARROW!!!! How can anyone sit in them???

The Sebring and Nitro may be decent cars, but nobody cares or is even willing to waste their time to give them a shot. Why? Because they’re two of the ugliest cars ever made. Who would be seen in one of those catastrophies?

come on you retarded idiots of course they were gonna end up disastrous failiures looking like that. the sebring looks like it was designed by a blind man and the nitro is just hopelessly pathetic. im surprised the whole company didnt go bankrupt within a matter of seconds.

They should be upset. There are just a few good Chrysler Group models out there. Hopefully the new overlords can trim the fat - and there’s a lot to trim.

what lousy group of assholes on this site will blame the UAW for this cuz i wanna hear it

LOL….MITCH bANGOWITZ…ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT AMERICANS HAVE BIG A$$?? LOL

Why are they trying to design their cars based on what everyone else is doing. This memo makes it sounds like they were designing and engineering a car that was “about as good” as the rest. That’s not how you get ahead. While we’re on the topic on non-leather interior options, Volvo has a nice fabric option, I think it’s called T Tech or some such, stain resistant, durable, and doesn’t look half bad either.

agreed jdepould…. i love how they won’t design anything better than what they think the competition will. always the lowest common denominator, the least amount of effort…. no wonder daimler dumped them. someone should just jump off a bridge so that they will as well.

i heard of tht fabric, toyota camry hybird offers a similar option forgot the name but molds the person sitting in the seat and is breathable. i forgot its other benefits as well.

Damn…if this leak is true, I foresee a MASSIVE re-design *very* soon for both the Nitro, Sebring and possibly others (let’s hope they kill the Compass, which is one of the ugliest monstrosities ever created). Excellent move, IMO, becuase the Nitro’s styling surely needs some fixing.

I wonder if this will have any affect on the new Jeep Liberty. As far as I can tell it’s a Nitro with a different grill.

Interiors on par with Hyundai Accent? You must be talking about a 2000 or so Accent. Any brand new Hyundai nowadays, the interior quality blows away anything Chrysler has even hoped to put out.

Personally, if I worked for Chrysler right now, I’d be embarrassed. The Sebring is a joke for a new model, and its styling is very questionable. And as C&D said, it’s a very Buick-like car, and Buicks are already being made by someone else, and are built better, look better, and perform better. The Nitro only looks good if it’s the top-of-the-line model. Anything south of the full-tilt Nitro looks REALLY ghetto and downmarket with the dark gray molding and tinny thin-steel wheels. I actually think the Nitro (again, in its fully-optioned form) is not a bad looker…but it’s so redundant even then. The Caliber, while it seems to be selling, has no cachet at all and is very boring; and did they ever release the SRT-4 Caliber? I read about it over a year ago in C&D and I have yet to see a single one.

The Jeep Compass/Patriot brothers don’t make sense, with the Compass pulling the Jeep brand down. The Patriot is supposed to harken back to the old Cherokee, but it only has a 4-banger, starts at FWD, and likely is not nearly as rugged since it’s Caliber-based. It has some off-roading creds on paper, but has anyone really flogged it in the wild yet to see how good it really is?

People bag on GM for its problems, but Ford and Chrysler are in far worse shape if you ask me.

….. Lee says the company “missed where the market was to end up versus our projections.”
….. He says Chrysler misjudged what the competition would offer in terms of
….. interior quality, ride, noise and vibration, and fuel economy.
.
Outraged over that? Why?? Lee and LaSorda should just ask themselves one simple question: was it senior management that approved that 4 years down the road the market would be at a place where people demanded poorly engineered, noisy vehicles with crappy suspension dynamics and vastly inferior material quality? For some reason I doubt it was the new intern in marketing who committed Chrysler to the development of these vehicles.

By the way, Tim G, you’ll note there isnt one BMW in that JP Powers list, so maybe Chryslers are better than Bimmers after all.

No matter what everyone’s opnion Damiler has and never did have anything to do with the designs of the chrysler group cars. The where involved in the engineering side but thats about it. Chrysler has always been incharge of it own designs.

Example of this is when Dr Z said that the avenger/sebring look more like cars rental car only just about fit for rental. Why would he allowed the designs to go through if he thought they were that awful as they rerally are?

At this point, I still remember the picture of that big, ugly, grey cup holder in the new Jeep.

i think Chrysler is the worse out of the big 3. ford was going up a bit, and GM is making a comeback, but Chrysler is making more and more mistakes. they should stop worrying about the viper beating the vette and worry more about there models. in face the only good looking models that Chrysler has is the 300c, charger, and viper. thats it. the new liberty is ugly as hell to.

What I don’t understand is why these two models? They are the best models in the new car lineup. Its the rest of the fleet that needs major improvement in everyway. These two models are also dissappointing just less so. Chrysler is not what it used to be. Chrysler should be outraged over the performance of their company as it is well deserved.

The Nitro is the ugliest SUV since the Aztek. And the Seabring is on another level of ugly.

The Nitro and the Sebring seems quite tame compared with the ugly Dodge sedan siblings. The Charger and the Avenger. They both have the tacked-on rear bulging fenders.Yuk…

Nitro looks fine actually, but the cheap materials kill it. New Jeep Liberty will go down because it’s not a real Jeep.

I guess I’m the only one who thinks the new Sebring looks better than the old generation :O

While I don’t care for the roofline, I think the detailing on the car is quite nice.

well, thats there fault that they let those cars come out the way they did, i really dont like the look of the sebring in particular; especially from the c pillar back.

thank you gbb

Hmm… I thought I was the only one who noticed how incredibally ugly these vehicles are.

Fire any and all monkeys who had any part in this mess.

There are more than enough qualified and capable people that should be replacing these worthless primates.

I do not like any product that the Chrysler group makes. The materials used in all of the cars made by Chrysler are of very bad quality. The cars feel like they were made under the Nixon administration. The reasons why Chrysler failed to sell are more than obvious and the CEO and Product Manager should have stepped in and done something. Even the nicer Chrysler (Dodge) models are ugly including the Dodge Viper. Its time for a new generation of cars to be born. Lets see what the future holds with Chrysler’s as their new owners have many obstacles.

Current Grand Cherokee also looks FUGLY.

Consumer Reports’ review of the Nitro was painful…..talk about destroying a truck — they ripped it apart in every way.

how can Chryco claim it “missed where the market was to end up versus our projections” when the Sebring is benchmarked to the 1988 Accord?

These aren’t cases of “missing the market.” They either deliberately green-lighted designs they knew would be non-competitive right from launch day, or didn’t believe the buying public would recognize crap when it saw crap.

Either way somebody ought to lose their job over these vehicles. I hope the new owners fumigate the place.

Chryco’s problem is that it reads the market properly once every 20 years, knocks out one hit (Caravan/Voyager in 1983, 300 in 2003, etc.) and spends the rest of the time building defeatist also-ran vehicles that nobody wants. What segment of the public is clamoring for Sebrings, Commanders, Nitros, Compasses, etc.? Nobody.

If their next hit isn’t due until 2023, maybe they should just close the thing down til then.

Let’s see if they learned a lesson and abort the 2008 Dakota face lift before it hits the streets…

=============>>now Elvio c’mon don’t be rediculous….i’m not biased cuz i own an SRT-4 but the current Jeep Grand Cherokee is seriously one of the best looking “Real” SUV’s currently on the market right now……and the Grand Cherokee SRT-8?? yea, it looks wayyy better than the Porsche Cayenne Turbo by a long shot and i am a DIE HARD Porsche fan…don’t jump on the bandwagon everytime it rolls by cuz you might end up sayin somethin rediculous

The Chrysler frequency of hits is actually every 10 years. The minivan in 1983, the cab-forward Intrepid in 1993, the 300 in 2003.

The Wrangler is a hit. Huge hit. If they improved production capacity they would have some decent revenue.

Vertical, Chrysler is positioned well with the Dakots but the truck sucks ass. Dodge has all the parts on the shelf to make it a big seller but they are too dumb to actually do it. There is nothing interesting in the catagory, not even the Asians have a fair entry. The market is there, just ignored by Chrysler. Chrysler management is just freakin blind.

Blind indeed, gbb. Maybe Cerebus will do something positive (like completely clear out the current management team).