Cerberus Swears You'll Want A New Chrysler… Someday
There’s more news re: Chrysler’s mysterious-yet-overhyped 2010 model line, this time from former Treasury Secretary and current Cerberus bigwig John Snow. Despite earlier conflicting reports from John Campi and Jim Press on the number of 2010 model releases, Snow says there will be seven new Chryslers come the mythical year. The International Herald Tribune credulously summarizes Snow’s assertions with the methinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much headline: “Cerberus: New Chrysler Products Will Have Appeal.” What form this appeal will assume is left to our imagination. Anyway… “I know there’s a deep commitment here to putting out better products,” says Snow. “In the end, this comes down to producing cars that people want at attractive prices, and having your dealers in concert with the manufacturer. I think we’re going to get that right. I really do.” Really, you do? Because right now the only thing indicating that Chrysler’s woeful quality will improve is the fact that at least one model in the upcoming “product revolution” (product revulsion?) will be a rebadged Nissan Versa. Otherwise, we’re just getting more of the “quality improvement” executive chatter we’ve been hearing since (then Chrysler employee) Bob Lutz famously remarked that “there is no other area in the field of human communications that is as rife with disinformation as the story on Chrysler quality.”
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"John Snow. As Ms. Palin asked of that VP job, what is it that he does every day? I hadn’t heard a peep out of him in months." I'll tell ya what that bald-headed buzzard does all day, he schemes up ways of making himself obscenely wealthy at the expense of others. That's all he did when he was Chairman & CEO of CSX and I'm in a position to know.
no_slushbox: "Hell, they need a new Crossfire; they can’t keep selling 2006 Crossfires forever." You'd be surprised... I recently checked the local Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-[s]Eagle[/s] dealer inventory and, apparently, they can keep selling them forever. Or taking forever to sell them.
I've often wondered - how much of a car's long term quality is dependent on it's owner? Seen people get decades out of the cheapest cars and seen people kill a perfectly good quality car in 5 years.