Chrysler's Canadian CEO Defends Lineup, Anonymously
Reid Bigland may sound like the name of a Harold Robbins character, but he’s the CEO of Chrysler Canada. And good for him! But apparently this little factoid is not important enough for The Montreal Gazette. The paper published an article penned by Mr. Bigland entitled “Chrysler: It’s all about great products,” with the sole identifier “Freelance.” That said, if you had any doubts about the author’s paid Pollyanna perspective, a quick read– noting the use of the royal “we”– will disabuse you of those notions. “Nearly half of all Canadians are buying four-cylinder vehicles, and over the past year we have launched three outstanding products to appeal to these consumers. The Dodge Caliber, Jeep Patriot and Jeep Compass all offer our four-cylinder World Engine – Chrysler Canada’s most fuel-efficient powertrain. Equipped with this engine, these vehicles achieve better than 7.1L/100 km (40 mpg). Our trio has proved extremely popular, with sales up 30 per cent calendar-year-to-date through August.” Meanwhile, in August, Chrysler’s Canadian sales slid 24.2 percent to 15,548 units. Car sales fell 39.3 percent to 2,517, while truck sales were down 20.3 percent at 13,031. Anyway, who said the Volt was the only Americna revolution [not] in town? “The all-new 2009 Ram is a game-changer that really raises the bar for the competition.”
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Well, that's nice. Chryslers 4 cylinder 'economy' cars get marginally better mileage than an 01 Impala with 3.4L V6 (I average about 36mpg[imp - or 30mpg US].) No wonder Chrysler's going broke.
VW dealers in Canada are doing better than before in terms of product. Since they made VW of Canada separate from VWoA, Canadian dealers got the City Golf and City Jetta, which seem to be popular, especially while no TDIs were available. Plus VWoC is just calling the Jetta wagon a "Jetta wagon". None of the Sportwagen crap.
This has been pissing me off lately. Everywhere I go, the NA Car Makers advertise their cars here (Ontario) in Imperial MPG. Basically because most of the numbers people see when referencing mpg are US numbers, they decided to put their numbers in Imperial to make them look better. I can't imagine someone falling for this, travelling to the US and doing a basic pump calculation on MPG and getting nowhere near the numbers advertised. I am actually waiting on the "imports" to start using the same tactic soon just to make Chrysler/GM/Ford look idiotic. " The Prius gets 58 mpg!! woot" Or whatever the calculation comes to.