Lee Iacocca tells it like it is to Charlie Rose
We've all taken to calling them the Big 2.5 - and I think we have ourselves to thank for that - and here's Lee Iacocca to tell us why that is. Certainly an authority on Chrysler, he has a unique and casual perspective on the company. He says he wished he had the money to buy it when it went up for sale because - get this - "... it's a good buy."
According to him, comparatively, Chrysler has low production costs and if it were making small cars, it would be pulling in steady profits and building back its reputation.
Of course, Iacocca isn't just here trying to save the automotive world. He's on Charlie
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[Source: Google Video, Thanks for the tip, Linton!]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Henry 12:51PM (5/26/2007)
The big 2.5 are not the only dinosaurs making cars. Mercedes who has built hybrid buses since 1969 still has done nothing of the sort for cars and SUVs. Seems the japanese are the most innovative and with China emerging especially with Lithium batteries seems European automakers will feel it the worst - having the greenest and most fuel-frugal consumers.
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Kent Beuchert 1:38PM (5/26/2007)
Apparently there's a fantasy that a company that can't make a profit can still outdesign the
competition. Unless they're really lucky, that ain't going to happen. I'm getting tired of hearing the simpleminded advice that Detroit simply build cars that people want to buy. How about this one : sell cars at prices that allow you to make a profit. See how easy it is to solve all our problems. Next up : solving terrorism. This is so easy.
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pamela lorraine 9:46AM (5/27/2007)
yeah what happend to the neon?
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MikeW 4:19PM (5/27/2007)
7-8000lbs SUVs, I can only think of one, the excursion.
Bill Richardson, I thought he was going to say Ron Paul, based on the virtues that Iacocca holds it high regard.
That Neon engine was mighty smooth, with those balance shafts, wait Chrysler decided to skip them because it would have added something like $200 dollars.
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Azrael4h 2:48PM (5/28/2007)
How quickly people forget the Neon. 30mpg (with the DOHC/auto, and under my brother's foot. He never slowed his '96 down below 80), more room than the competition (to the point where a first gen Neon is still more comfortable IMO, and more roomy than a Civic), and much better performance. It also had the distinction of pulling a healthy profit.
It's issues were relatively minor ones, inexpensive to fix, but fatal to the car's reputation. Add in incompetent German management, and the car floundered in it's second generation. If it had been properly updated, by the same engineers, we would have seen the Neon not get a badly geared automatic, get better mileage, and probably more room. We also wouldn't have lost the DOHC engine, instead the SOHC would have gone up to the 150hp mark, and the DOHC to around 170.
My brother has bought 5 Neons, two first generation, 3 second. Those 5 are among the only cars to survive him. All of them were lost due to his own financial bungling, not because the car was in any way, shape, or form bad. He's looking at a 6th Neon, a '00 with the 5 speed. He needs better room and fuel economy than he's getting in his Nissan Sentra, with two kids.
Chrysler turned a profit easily back before Germans took over. It remains to be seen if they can do so again under the new management.
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TomG 7:31PM (6/23/2007)
Back in the 60's Chrysler came out with a gas turbine engine that through Louisville Ky where I lived at the time. The man driving it had nothing but good things to say about it except that it was a concept car that Chrysler was thinking about selling. He also mentioned great gas mileage, fewer parts and more dependability. After that day I never saw it or heard anything about it. It simply died a quiet death like many other good ideas. Wonder what happened with it?
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NIck 2:19AM (7/11/2007)
I'll tell you what happened to the gas turbine engine that got such great gas mileage; the people who would have lost money got to it (i.e. oil companies). And that's why we're still getting barely over 30 mpg in our cars today. We had huge gas saving technology as far back as 50 years ago (studied in my mechanical engineering dynamics class), but ultimately it's not up to the engineers whether or not a new design is implemented. That job goes to an easily threatened but highly bribe-able manager.
Hell, if you came up with a way whereby everyone could easily generate enough electricity to power their own homes and never have to purchase energy again, what do you think the power companies would do? Probably something that would involve you not being around anymore.
If you found a purely natural cure for AIDS, do you think that any pharmaceutical company would just stand idly by as you cured the world for free? Hell no they wouldn't.
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