Chrysler’s problems are many…besides the obvious one- teetering on the edge of bankruptcy… their talent pool (eg.- they lost Freeman Thomas who designed the Audi TT and the Chrysler 300 concept to go over to working under JMays at Ford), the lack of a clear profitable strategy, the shoddy workmanship, the ruinous labor contracts…it is systemic and only a clean slate- including mass firings at the top, can put their situation right.

I wouldn’t bet on their success.

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Brendan didn’t quote that much, these statements really have to be out of context. There’s been ‘talk’ that in addition to reduction of models and capacity, there needs to be some mergers. His statements sound like he’s trying to position chrysler for this battle for survival, not for the market of the next decade.

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I believe that if the industry is to survive it will move from mass market vehicles to producing niche vehicles like the C6, Wrangler and the Hummer
and leave the mass market to the cutthroat competition from Europe and Asia. This is much the story of the British Auto industry following the nationalization of British Leyland in the 1970s.

That said I doubt that Chrysler possesses the engineering talent and imagination to pull that off but don’t be surprised if we think of the remnants of Ford and GM in the same way we now think of Lotus, Jaguar, Land Rover and perhaps (if they did everything right) BMW and Mini.

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