That's the new Durango/Cherokee.

 

This Ram brand non-sense is a waste of resources and time. Their reasoning is illogical for making a separate division. Dodge is stronger united as one than splitting it apart. The division that needs to be split is Chrysler and perhaps Jeep. Chrysler should be about luxury not about volume, and Jeeps are not supposed to be FWD station wagons that would never have a pray of being able to keep up with the Wrangler.

 

I don't think any brand needed to be split. Too many brands will get Chrysler in trouble and there will be too many doubles out there. Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep were fine how they were.

EDIT... BTW I will be buying the new Durango ASAP. It's beautiful... Almost perfect. The Durango was my first Dodge love (I made my mom buy a 1st gen in high school), followed by the Viper.

 

Too many can cause problems; however, trying to do too much with a deep rooted brand can damage it to the point of making it irrelevant which to a large degree has happened to Chrysler. Because there is no standard level luxury model in Chrysler's line-up, the more premium offerings won't sell and aren't taken seriously as say a Cadillac equivalent for a less than Cadillac price. Having models that undermind the purpose of Jeep also hurts the image. In my view, Chrysler needs stop this Ram brand foolishness and to either bring back Plymouth or Eagle to pick up these phony Jeeps that would work perfectly under the mold of what the AMC Eagle was and take these cheapo Chryslers.

 

That could work.

 

I liked the eagles...way before their time

 

The essential issue is that they need something besides just Dodge in the car market as not every one wants a bold styled car, some prefer something more subtle and upscale style without the price tag and without the standard options. The mistake that was made back in the late 90s as good as the 90s were in my view, was that they failed to properly establish the correct role for Dodge and Chrysler. Although the LHS and transferred 2nd gen. Vision (aka 300M) firmly established the correct role for Chrysler, they didn't carry this all the way through which lessened their capabilities. Now the Sebring Convertible based on the textbook example of Chrysler's success vs. Dodge and Plymouths lack of success in this segment from the 80s and 90s to me is proof that the Convertible was meant to remain the only convertible and was acceptable for this one model not to be a standard luxury offering. The mistake in my view was the Sebring coupe, Cirrus, and Concorde.

Cloud car: Now, on some years they kept the Cirrus as a standard luxury but at other times they didn't as they seemed as though they were trying to figure out where the Plymouth was supposed to end the Chrysler was supposed to begin (should the Cirrus have the 2.4L I4 as the base engine, and if not should we allow the Plymouth Breeze to have the 2.4L I4 or only allow it to have the 2.0L I4). By doing this they were misunderstanding the role of Plymouth and the relationship between them and Chrysler. In the popular Acclaim that preceded the Breeze, they did not deny the Plymouth fans the opportunity to have a V6. Now understandably, Chrysler would want to sell more Chryslers and Dodge's as they could charge more for them, but making the Plymouth so low that it can't even compete with Ford and Chevrolet isn't doing them any good either. The problem was the V6 they had at the time (the 2.5L Mitsubishi V6) was so small that the difference between it and the 2.4L in power and acceleration was so little that it didn't compare well against the competition which all had larger engines (except for Ford and Mazda). In my view, they had a couple choices. They could have offered a downsized 3.5L (3.2L perhaps) or (as much as I hate to suggest this) requested instead for a 24 valve 3.0L V6 from Mitsubishi as the standard V6 engine for the Cirrus as this would have provided roughly the magic 200hp number to be seen as competitive and looked into making a upper model using the 3.5L. Having this would have helped to move Chrysler away from being compared against Toyota and Honda at this time by coming equipped more similarly to the Acura and Lexus offerings while attempting to lead against the ES300 and TL with the 3.5L in performance. This would have allowed the room for Plymouth to safely provide a V6 offering with the 3.3L V6. Although a pushrod engines in the V6 market were going out of fashion for higher brands, it would not have been out of place at all for Plymouth's segment as GM still used them from Chevrolet to Buick in the smaller mid-sized segment for quite some time. Dodge could have maintained it's I4s as well as having had the base level engine offered in the Chrysler to establish the intended direction of making Dodge and Chrysler higher tech divisions, but distinguished itself by having the turbo I4 featured in the Mexican version giving it the inexpensive performance image which is where Dodge thrives.

DSM coupe: Although as previously stated I will agree that the non-standard luxury Sebring makes sense, the non-standard luxury did not make any sense in the case of the Sebring coupe especially considering the segment. Coupes of this size were traditionally considered to be a "personal-luxury" model and the base Sebring coupe was more strip down than anything else in the Chrysler line-up by quite a margin (some lacking power windows, locks, and cruise control). With the limited market for this segment and the established market demand for both Dodge and Chrysler, the Sebring Coupe should have been a luxury offering. All they needed to do is offer the same powertrain and offer it loaded at the base level as listed for the Cirrus to compete against the desired models.

Concorde: This model was a repeat of the Chrysler E-class mistake of trying to push Plymouth out by lowering Chrysler's standards. This strategy frankly doesn't make sense as all it will do is lower the number of sales of the higher models for people who simply want a Chrysler. There was sufficient room for both a Dodge and a non-luxury but upscale appearing model. This should have been the Plymouth offering as it was rather plain compared to the LHS/New Yorker & Eagle Vision and the LHS and 300M in the 2nd gen.

Eagle, they ironically named it after the defining AMC model but neither maintained that nor tried to replace it. We could really use them now.

But getting back to the topic, I'm hopeful that this new Durango will be a rebirth for the nameplate and bring back the great memory of those excellently styled and shaped SUVs which established the nameplate.