At the Los Angeles Auto Show just four months ago, the Dodge Challenger concept caught its share of eyeballs, but only a Challenger concept, and the latest iteration of the always crowd-catching Viper, the company really had nothing exceptional to show. Now, at the 2008 NY Auto Show, Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep certainly wasn't breaking any new ground, unless you count 6.1 liter Hemi engines as something remarkable and worth writing home about. We made fun of the company's exhibit at the LA Auto Show, riffing on their heavily-promoted "Hybrid Hemi" on our "CAR NUT TV" program. Now, we realize we shouldn't have gotten laughs of a dying company. We all saw the Plymouth and Oldsmobile divisions killed in the past few years; but there seems to be more than a reasonable chance that Chrysler itself will soon be bankrupt, taking Dodge and Jeep with it. There are about 80,000 full-time employees of Chrysler, 50,000 of them union members. At the end of this post, we're including a very short history of a current supplier problem affecting Chrysler which shows how the company has changed since being taken "private". (Photo - Above, Dodge Challenger's first official public introduction at the NY Auto Show; Below, another all-new Dodge Challenger, this one "taking it to the streets").
One thing Chrysler and the New York Auto Show have in common: The Chrysler 300; the new one, 
not the classics. Introduced at the NY Auto Show in 2003 as a concept car, the 300, produced for sale in 2004 as a 2005 model, was the last car even resembling a "hit" which Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep has built. Both of the other cars using the same "LX platform" as the 300, the Dodge Charger and Magnum, achieved their own relative levels of success, but now they're all old and used-up. The car business is all about "What have you done for me lately?", and when a car-buyer asks that question of Chrysler and its divisions today, there are no good answers.
Chrysler is in deep trouble, and with it, Dodge and Jeep are also both on their last legs. With India's Tata expected to announce their purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford next week, car-makers in both India and China are being talked about as possible buyer's of Jeep.
Those who thought taking the company private, ridding itself of all those pesky shareholders, at least the ones who still had the company's stock, turned out to not be the best idea in the car business after all. With new ownership by a Wall Street investment firm, Cerberus (and we all know how well they've been doing recently --- Did someone mention Bear Stearns?), and with a failed former Home Depot CEO, Bob Nardelli, a loser who was fired by his own board of directors for taking that outfit's stock into the toilet now Chrysler Chairman and CEO, things in Highland Park are probably not as happy as they were almost anytime in the company's long and storied past. And all the ex-Toyota and ex-other execs Cerberus might hire don't matter a darn as long as Bob Nardelli sits in the top seat. When has a non-auto industry executive ever done a car company the least bit of good? (Photo Above and Below - 2009 Dodge Challenger).
Bob Nardelli is about as far as possible as you can get from a "car guy", and even with the former 
highest-ranking American to ever serve Toyota, Jim Press, ex-COO of Toyota North America, now Chrysler's incumbent vice-chairman and president, there are limits to anyone's genius, especially one who is not in the right position to begin with. Sadly, the one American car company named for a real engineer and known for so many innovations didn't exhibit even one product truly important and/or relevant to American car culture, circa 2008, at the NY Auto Show.
The big news from the company is, naturally, about their new line of Challenger cars, throwbacks all to the gravy days of American musclecars of the 1950s and '60s, with one major difference: Gas prices in those years were well under $1 per gallon, and now they are near or even over $4 a gallon throughout the US. Chrysler will offer three Challenger "flavors"; Dodge Challenger SRT8, Dodge Challenger R/T and Dodge Challenger SE, with prices starting in the low $20,000's. (Photo - 2009 Dodge Challenger concept car engine).
Some 35 years after their glory days, Dodge says they are "redefining modern American muscle", with these re-creations of "vintage American muscle cars" blending what Chrysler's PR aces call "nostalgic flair with modern engineering and technology."
Chrysler says these "five-passenger, two-door coupes" are produced from the "proven Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger platforms", the aforementioned LX platform. "Proven" is an interesting word when used by automotive PR-types. What it really means is: "old".
They say these are the "first modern-day, Hemi-powered cars offered with a precision-shift six-speed manual transmission, and a new-generation 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 which delivers increased fuel economy (an estimated 5 percent) with more horsepower (30 hp) and improved torque (8 lb.-ft.)" over the previous Hemi engine. This "5.7-liter Hemi goes from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds" and the
"SRT-exclusive 6.1-liter Hemi V-8 engine goes from zero to 60 mph in less than five seconds". (Photo - A Dodge Challenger concept car at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, 2007).
Chrysler goes on: "More than 25 safety and security features including supplemental side-curtain air 
bags, advanced multi-stage air bags, Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and anti-lock brakes; Equipped with cutting-edge technology including MyGIG™ radio/navigation, UConnect Hands-free Communication System, Keyless Go push-button start and Remote Start".
Chrysler concludes, and we again quote: "To ensure quality, Dodge Challenger engineers logged nearly 3.2 million customer-equivalent miles in the development process, and the all-new 2009 Dodge Challengers will arrive this fall".(end Chrysler PR release)
An old industry joke goes like this: "GM has their customers do the last 10 million miles of development of their new vehicles". But somehow, it's not too funny, not anymore. (Photo - 2009 Dodge Challenger concept interior).
Here now a quick look, from a plastics industry website (modplas.com), at the differen t way Chrysler handles a major supplier since being taken "private"; to explain, a "Tier One supplier" makes a product which is delivered directly to a vehicle assembly plant and installed on an assembly line. The car-maker and supplier work closely together during every stage of the process, which brings them contracts from the car-maker, and, in return, the supplier delivers a good product to the assembly plant. Also, an "OEM" is an "original equipment manufacturer," the car-maker itself; it is the job of Tier One suppliers to win contracts from the OEMs and supply the OEMs with the ordered product:
"Reflecting deepening challenges within an automotive sector that faces rising commodity prices with slackening vehicle demand, a dispute between Tier One supplier Plastech Engineered Products (Dearborn, MI) and automaker Chrysler LLC escalated in early February (2008), with Plastech filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Chrysler temporarily halting production at sites in Illinois, Delaware, Michigan, and Ohio. The two have since come to terms, but the episode could become a familiar one in 2008 for a struggling auto sector. (Photo - 2009 Dodge Challenger all gussied-up on a test course with Michigan Highway Patrol paint-and-lights).
Chrysler, which is now a private company that’s 80.1% owned by equity investor Cerberus Capital, with a 19.9% stake still held by former partner Daimler AG, took a different tack with Plastech when the company announced financial difficulties. In the past, to avoid a shutdown, automotive OEMs often stepped in with financial aid and concessions for key suppliers that were struggling. No longer driven by share price, Chrysler decided it would not assist Plastech in this instance. An ongoing issue is the proprietorship of 4000 pieces of Chrysler-owned “equipment”, which likely refers to tools, with the issue to be settled in a federal bankruptcy court." (end of story)
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