What is Chrysler thinking?

Funny you mention Demming and Crosby - they are anathema in the U.S.
auto industry today. They are now considered impractical relics that
the industry outgrew long ago.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

It does seem that way. And it is Deming, with one "m". You need better
quality assurance!


Matt

 

In many respects my 99 300M was far better assembled than my 2001 Avalon.
Unfortunately, if you consider things breaking, nothing broke during my 5
years of ownership of the Avalon, but the 300M windows probably broke 14
times if you count each window repair once. One of the AT sensors went.
One day it refused to start and had to be towed from my garage. Never
happened again but we will never know why. As a whole we liked the 300M
much more than the Avalon but if we did not have a service agreement to pay
for those window fixes, we would probably feel differently.

 

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

My 89 Acclaim to 143K without any transmission failures, with the
original exhaust system, with the

I only wish my '94 Acclaim had gone so long without the head gasket
having a catastrophic blow out at 58k miles (as did our '95 and '97
Neons with 71k & 83k miles respectively).
The head gaskets on most of the ChryCo 4 cylinders sucked !

 

My 2.5L was rock solid until the day my wife totaled it. The only
repair of any significance that it required was replacement of a cracked
flex plate. I heard of the early Neons having HG problems, but never
heard of that with the 2.5L. You are just rough on vehicles I guess!

Matt

 

Actually, I've been driving ChryCo cars & trucks for almost 40 years
(bought over 2 dozen of them new including 2 Road Runners & a Hemi GTX
). I'm retired now & restore old MoPar muscle cars as a hobby. I'm
anything but rough on my vehicles, in fact I take great care of them.
But it's a fact that ChryCo 4 cylinder engines were rough on head
gaskets. Almost every Neon made (til the mid '99 models) puked their
head gaskets. This went on til the use of the MLS gasket.
Also, I worked at the telephone company and my best buddy was a fleet
mechanic there. He used to change head gaskets like peanuts and popcorn
thru the years on the old Omnis and Shadows with the 2.2's and Spirits
with the 2.5's.
Like I said, it seems as though the MLS gasket resolved the problem for
the last half dozen years, but before that ...... ouch !

 

Well although I have a '95 Concord I must put in a vote for the terrible
reliability of it's air conditioner. The first auto air conditioner
I've had and it had one part failure after another. The evaporator has
been replaced three times. Several other parts have been replaced once.
However I'll vote for Chrysler extending the air conditioner warranty to
7 yrs and fixing it up, multiple times. I'm now about 4 yrs after the
last fix and it's still working. Fingers crossed.

The rest of the car is rock solid, even the complex transmission.
The engine, which is also used in the Van, is the best I've every had.
In fact the excellent drive train is what held me back from dumping it.
When the air conditioner fails again, pressure will be on me to trade.

I was stung once before with the very poor 4 spd transmission in my
1981 2.2L Horizion. After 2 yrs of continual maintenance, done by the
one mechanic locally who understood it, Chrysler replaced it's guts
completely and it was finally well. If only I had realized this was the
first yr of Chrysler's new 4 sp.

My next vehicle will be based on a several years of good maintenance
reports on the components used.

 

I seem to recall that 1990 was the first model year that incorporated the
4-speed electronic "ultra-drive" transmission. I might be wrong, but this
could explain how the 1989 that you hauled off to the junk yard still had
its original transmission.

We had a 1990 Grand Caravan that only made it to 6 years/48K before it
needed the transmission replaced. Thankfully, they had a 7-year/70K mile
warranty so we only paid $100 for the replacement. We own three other
post-1996 Chryslers that all have the 4-speed and with regular maintenance
(30K fluid and filter changes with ATF+4), they seem to be holding up very
well, although none of the vehicles have broken 100K yet. Two have had
output speed sensors replaced, but otherwise no problems with the
transmissions.

Bob

 

And suppose you were on a vacation trip in the middle of nowhere on a
weekend when those output sensors trashed out. You would not have been very
happy. Those are the kind of issues CHrysler needs to address.

 

Nope, 1989. Available with all the corporate V6s (3.0 Mitsu, 3.3 and 3.8
Chrysler). Not available with the 4-speeds.

The 3-speed automatic was available with the 3.0. But, I do know someone
with a '92 Spirit 3.0 with over 200,000 miles on the *original* unrebuilt
A604.

 

Really? We put a man on the moon with 1960's technology, and now we have to
use tiny windows because we don't have the technology to lift them? I
realize you're serious, but you shouldn't be.

 

Or did we?

 

That is exactly what happened to us in our 2001 T&C on Hwy 50 in NV
(dubbed the loneliest hwy in America) 200 miles from the nearest dealer.
Locked up in 2nd gear.

WVK

 

Strictly for 50s styling, nothing functional. >
My friends 56 Buick looks very similar in profile, 50s UGLY!

 

My '95 Concords transmission is doing very well. No maintenance but
fluid changes.
I just had it serviced, got the full job a flush and pan drop.
The dealer advised me that the pan drop only changes about 1/3 of the
fluid. For an older car like mine they recommended a flush at half the
normal service interval, with a pan drop about every third flush.

As before previous services it was occasionally shifting a bit rough.
After the service shifting is a smooth as new again.

 

Actually I thought my functional tiny window logic was obvious humor. I
guess I was the only one who got my joke.

 

Back to the original topic:

All of the US automakers are in trouble due to their obsolete
thinking.

They signed expensive labor contracts that are pulling them under.
Some of these go back to the days of Alfred Sloan at GM in the 1940's.
I believe that it costs GM around $1500 per car just for employee
medical benefits. Plus they have billions of unfunded pension
liability and have been legally bound to fund some of the pensions for
their now- bankrupt Adelphi former division.

The Wall Street Journal writers last week now estimate that there's a
40% chance of GM going into bankruptcy within 2 years, around a 25%
chance for Ford.
Daimler Chrysler can not be far behind... However, the merger with
Daimler has probably diversified the corporate business base to allow
for some saftey margins.

Meanwhile the Japanese auto makers are increasing their market share
and the Chinese auto industry is about ready to introduce cars into
the USA.
Their is a vast amount of excess auto assembly capacity around the
world. That can only drive profitability down and worsen the situation
for USA makers.

Other posters on here have cited Chrystler's pressure on suppliers to
cut costs.
Yet, many of the Japanese companies are using the same parts
suppliers. As a matter of fact the domestic content of several Toyota,
Nissan and Honda models is higher than some so-called domestic models.
Yet, the Japanese makers have still maintained a quality edge over
Detroit. How do they do that?
By using long range thinking.

One poster quoted the known sway bar bushing problems on the Chrysler
mini-vans.I've experienced this first hand, having had to replace the
busings three times within 70K miles in my 2002 Caravan.

Not doing a redesign has cost them more in terms of warranty claims
and lost customer faith than the redesign would have cost. It's that
type of reluctance to rectify problems that is costing Detroit market
share. They are penny wise and pound foolish, to use an old quote.

I'm not optimistic that the U.S. makers will survive in their present
form. Their only hope is to follow the airline industry: declare
bankruptcy, void past labor contracts and reorganize without their
current debt. Of course, there will then be political hell to pay...

Doug

 

Different business culture apparently. They must not have MBA degrees
in Japan, or if they do, the philosophy taught is 180° different - i.e.,
long term vs. short term gains. Any idiot could run a company (for a
while, or for a long time if carried/subsidized by an outside money
source - I've seen that done too) for short term gains (i.e., "We can
make this part cheaper" and "What the customer doesn't know at the time
of initial purchase won't hurt them").

MBA's at work - doing what they do best.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

I remember when GM first signed the layoff contracts decades ago where
employees get 90% of their salaries for being laid off. I was thinking at
the time that the smartest thing someone on the assembly line could do would
be to put together lousy cars so no one would buy them resulting in his
layoff.