Christopher Said:
Just a reminder to all readers, Chrysler had some of the biggest recorded profits of any of the car manufacturers from mid to late 90's. Since, the quality has improved and the current labor rate that goes into producing the vehicle hasn't really changed. Chrysler had a 10 billion dollar fund, set aside by Lee Iacocca, that was to be used during bad times, such that are traditionally cyclically encountered by the car companies. This money had disappeared when it changed hands to the new Daimlerchrysler. Chrysler from 1998, was majority owned and ran by the German company Daimler. The neon disappeared and a lot of the front wheel drive cars were engineered to use German rear wheel drive power trains matched with big Hemi v8 engines. I believe the profit margin per vehicle sold was above average as well. Then there was the energy crisis where national average's of the price of gasoline goes to 4 dollars a gallon and everybody loosing their jobs, guess what, not many new car sales going on.
That's the best of my knowledge on what went wrong at Chrysler.
Posted On 6/4/2009 7:49:54 PM