The uaw had little power during the talks. They were told to take what the offer was or the whole company folds. I'd like to know what plants autoweek is talking about. Fiat has already said they are not going into shap. So we shall see I guess. Remember the 500 was supposed to be built here, but then went to mexico...

 

That's a shame, all of these jobs go to Mexico and most of the ******** are over here working tax free, go figure. I feel your pain Shap. My job of 18 years went belly up last year and many of or work was shipped south of the border. Owned by the same company. Had to start over myself after spending almost 1/2 of my life in that plant. Making injection molded plastic parts. Mostly automotive!!

 

So confusing...

So does that mean there is no more Dodge Ram, but there is a Ram Ram and a Ram Sprinter?

Will the cars get a new logo, the Ram head seems like it should be part of the Ram brand to me....

And... Ram.com is already taken

 

Explain this to me,if the Hemi can be made to achieve 20-21 mpg,how come the 4.7 or V-6 cant be made to get maybe 23-24?Sounds to me like you should just only offer one gas engine in the trucks,(Hemi!)

 

The smaller engines have to work harder to move the same amount of weight.

The 4.7L doesn't not have MDS which helps the Hemi achieve those numbers. Due to the overhead cam design of the 4.7L, it is *******ly impossible to place the solenoids to deactivate the valves.
I have gotten 23mpg from my Hemi @ 66mph on fairly flat road.

 

Very good ,no reason to have the other mills then.

 

Now, I'm not an engineer, but why is it that the 4.7L cannot receive MDS? The Honda V6 has it and the upcoming Pentastar V6 is supposed to have it.

This Ram brand idea is a way to dispose of Dodge without a doubt. Why would else would you do it. Their reasoning that it is keeping Dodge from appealing to the youth is a backwards argument. The youth like trucks because they can go off roading with them.

I have little faith that Fiat is going to be much better than Daimler. The fact that they like Cereberus want to invest nothing into the company, is a bad sign. Having the UAW in charge provides no confidence as they have done little to keep the company alive. They have lobbists; however, they did nothing to push the Government to take more Automotive friendly policies that would actually work (make the production of domestic fuels of ALL forms more widely available).

In my view, Chrysler needs to go back and reuse some of their older designs and utilize their own technology. They need to more widely use their own 6-speeds and get rid of all 4 and 5 speeds. They need to uniform on one V6 engine line (what is the point of having the Powertech and 60 degree engines being produced at the same time) to better utilize economies of scale, they need to offer diesels that actually get impressive fuel economy in their respective classes, they need to move Chrysler out of the volume market, they need to expand production of the Viper, they need to put in the same effort into the Dakota as they did with the Ram, they need to style the Avenger replacement after the Viper for some diverse styling instead of mini-Charger styling, they need to offer a compact replacement for the Neon, they need to make their OWN platforms and if they can't build their own get a partner who isn't just about dead due to being uncompetitive (Mitsubishi), stop using CVTs, and build their own engines and KEEP THEM UPDATED every 5 years minimum.

 

i Dont think that getting rid of some cars are a bad idea...as much as I like the lineup. Fiat and alfa romeo are bringing us back the sport compacts that diamler ditched. Think about the sales problems we were losing to more efficient toyotas and other foreign car markets. The only compact available after 06 was the Caliber...Strikes a bizzare note simply because its a wagon. I love all the Alfa Romeo Designs and would think a dodge or chrysler variant would make for good publicity.

 

This is the way I see it. Chrysler was doing well overall despite a few design flaws before the merger happened. Just about everything they sold was a hit, except for their efforts in badge engineering. Plymouth had several badge engineered models and none of them did much to help them. Eagle was nothing but badge engineering (with the only exception of the Vision and left over Eagle wagon which was dropped almost immediately after the buy out) and pretty much the only model that were successful besides the Vision was the Talon, but only during the first generation. Many of the models that Chrysler made that were similar were better cars. The only thing that you could claim was better was the performance models, but based off of what I've seen they don't seem to age as well.

After the merger, Chrysler had a lot of good offerings with great potential left over from before the merger (2nd gen Lutz cars). The problem was in the case of the I4s they neglected them. The fuel economy of the Stratus/Sebring was towards the lower end and the power which had been at the top during 1 gen became outdated over a span of 10 years. I don't know what they were thinking with the 2nd gen Neon. They tried to fix every perceived problem (the exterior styling in their minds) and destroyed the Neon's best selling point. In the first gen it was the bench marker for fuel economy (the manual version) and acceleration (for non-performance models). The 2nd gen lost about 4mpg and they never entirely resolved the problem. The Caliber to me was the symbol of all that was wrong with Daimler's approach. This was a 100% badge engineered model and didn't deserve to wear Dodge's badge. It had Hyundai engine, a JATCO (Nissan) transmission, a Mitsubishi platform and it is slow and even more inefficient. The problem with this is they loose potential customers like me doing this because when I want an American car, I want an AMERICAN car, not a car made from the scrap binds of Hyundai, Nissan, and a joke for a car company.

The Cloud cars weren't bad cars, but they held them back by only using the weakest V6s they had available, if they had offered the 3.5L or at least the 3.2L, I would be driving one right now. The Avenger/Sebring only improved on one thing, have the 3.5L, everthing else was a screw up. The interior doesn't even try. The trunk is small for even a compact. The styling is weird on the Sebring and the Avenger just looks like it tries too hard to try to be the Charger (or the Spirit) when it should be a sleek car. Again having the platform being a Mitsubishi also hurts my opinion of it.

The 1st gen Liberty was a breath of fresh air and I don't care what die hard Cherokee fans say, the only thing I liked about the Cherokee better was the 4.0L over the Powertech V6. The 2nd gen was royally messed up by not even trying to keep up in the powertrain department. If they had offered the 4.0L as they did in the Nitro and actually given it conservative gearing, it could have been both fast and fuel efficient. They really messed up the Dakota by making it a Chevrolet wannabe (WHY would you want to copy the manufacturer of the ugliest trucks on the market) and not offering the Hemi. They messed up the minivans by cheapening the interior and neutering the 3.8L. Okay, I'll get back to the point...

The issue is I'm concerned that just as badge engineering seems to fail 9 times out of 10, this will also hold true. I think it would be better to make a modern mid-sized sedan using a shorten LH platform as a template (as they are about the size that mid-sized has become), make a new compact platform from the Neon platform to resolve those problems. The thing I'm concerned about is that many customers will know that the Fiat/Alfa Romeo models are not Chryslers and will not buy them because of that. Also I know that that company does not have the best reputation just as Mitsubishi and Mercedes don't and that will further hurt Chrysler's image.

In my view, the situation of Toyota and the others gaining is a combo of propaganda by the automotive press and the Big Three not having a credible offering. GM's biggest mistake was going Opel crazy. The original Saturns were dull, had some dumb characteristics, and the such, but they had fuel economy and not bad power. Going with the Delta platform for all of GM was a dumb move, they should have implemented the S-series and actually made it desirable (good interiors, good styling, and updated the engine). The Focus was as or more lame than the Escort and got worse fuel economy and still is in my view. In my taste though, the Corolla is the ultimate lame compact and the Civic is the biggest turn off with all the ricing that owners do, but the fuel economy won people over. The press has covered up Toyota's long mess of reliability problems and anytime that the Big Three have a better offering they play the resale card or reputation card to give the inferior Toyota or Honda model the nod.

I think one of the other problems was the station wagon craze they got into. Some people might like them, but they seem to loose a lot in the fuel economy and power departments and no matter what you do to them, they lost to the minivan for a reason (they are the only thing less cool than a minivan).

That sums up most of my philosophy, I could write a couple more books on it here but my fingers are getting tired of typing.

 

How come the Ram pickup is still on Dodge.com?

If they want to brand cars and trucks as the own brand do it! Do not have a mess and make people wonder where to look for things.

I think this looks like a bad idea simply because I do not see it happening, all I see is confusion.