I think I'm not too far off the mark in stating that Daimler-Benz paid something like $400 Million for Chrysler Corp. The Chrysler division is now said to be worth about $200 mill, so someone, it could be argued, made a bit of a blunder with this deal - or did they?
See, I reckon that some of the design creativity within Chrysler was recognised by Stuttgart. I'd like to cite PT Cruiser, Dodge Magnum, Chrysler 300 and (dare I say it) 2nd Gen Viper SRT-10.
All except the Viper have been enormously successful - and the Viper is of course not a mainstream offering - and has the double difficulty of competing with the Z06 Corvette - but that still doesn't make it a bad car. Without Benz investment Euros, these cars would not have made it off the drawingboard and that would have lead to the collapse of Chrysler Corp years ago. The company is worth $200 m of anyone's money, just on Charger/Magnum/300c sales alone.
They are talking about 13,000 jobs being lost as a result of this - and as usual, it's probably the auto unions that need to ask themselves about that state of affairs. I read somewhere that about $3500 of the bill of materials for an average Chrysler car is ex-employee pension cost. I suspect that is all the manufacturer profit on a Sebring or PT.
Andrew, my friend, simply re-stating your misinformed and yawnsome accusations about the SRT-10 don't suddenly make them right. I feel that our last spat on the subject left you floundering and resorting to childish insults, rather than facts - please refer back to it for confirmation.
That notwithstanding, I think you could well be right. The Viper is an easy target for the number crunchers, because it requires a specialist facility to build it and it is, despite your bile-filled ranting, assembled by hand, at some cost.
So, rather than jeer and crow about it's probable demise, I feel we should celebrate the fact that it existed, due to the creativity and sense of fun and adventure of it's creators.
Finally, if they do give it the chop, it's popularity will only grow, rather than wain.
What really saddens me is that the proposed 2008 Dodge Challenger will probably now never make it beyond two prototypes....
