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Originally Posted by Playdrv4me  If it were not for the damn Germans, ruin it as they may have, Chrysler probably wouldnt exist at all today. For as long as I can remember, Chrysler has merely SURVIVED in the marketplace where it's two primary competitors often flourished and only until recently had serious turmoil of their own. |
Oh no no no... you don't want to play this game with me. Chrysler had been consistently profitable since the 80's when they had paid their loans back seven years ahead of schedule. Regardless of what you may think the K-cars and the minivans were wildly successful and were the key to their turn around in the 80s. It was those profits of the 80's which helped finance a string of successes in the 90's - the LH cars, the JX "could" cars, the Neon, the Ram, the Wrangler, the Grand Cherokee, etc... Before the "merger" they were one of the most profitable, per car manufacturers in the world, their quality and dependability were up (much more so than Mercedes and other Euro makes), Chrysler Financial was raking in money and they had 8-12 Billion in the bank. Do you honestly think Diamler would have leeched onto a failing company, Chrysler was in a stronger position in just about every area compared to Mercedes. In fact it was the 300M which was the linchpin for the deal, being such large, good handling, potent, well built, mass production car made Chrysler all the more attractive to Mercedes. It was supposed to be a "merger of equals," which we know was a crock... and the rest is history.
Bob Eaton screwed to pooch royally when we went forward with the deal. If you want to go even deeper I partially blame Iacocca for picking Eaton over Lutz, Lutz would have nixed the whole deal from the very beginning.
The point of all of this is that you are talking out your ass. I can already tell you're going to be one of those people who likes to contradict anything anyone says. Others may be fine with it but if you're gonna play the Chrysler game you better do your homework first. The fact remains that Chrysler would have been in a much stronger position right now if it weren't for Diamler, hell they could have started losing money on every vehicle sold and still have turned a profit with Chrysler Financial alone.
If this all isn't enough I can gladly pen part 2 about how exactly Mercedes went about screwing Chrysler, but hopefully we get my point.