Chrysler and Chery officially pull the plug on small car venture
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Any thoughts that Chrysler had of getting small cars through a joint venture with China's Chery Motors are now officially dead. The Detroit News has been told by Mike Manley, Chrysler EVP for international sales, that discussions between the two companies have concluded and the companies will pursue their own directions. The slackening Chinese market has meant that Chery has been losing significant amounts of money there and can't afford to invest in expansion to engineer and produce products for Chrysler elsewhere. Chrysler's hope had been to use the low cost of production in China to source small cars, but Chery is so far from producing products that would be able to pass US safety and emissions regulations that the cost would still have been prohibitive for Chrysler. For now it looks like Chrysler will be relying on Nissan and its Versa platform, at least in Central and South America. It's still not known if they will offer a variant of the Versa in the US.
Gallery: Dodge Hornet
[Source: Detroit News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
brandon 2:52PM (12/09/2008)
Too bad, the Hornet was a good looking mini-car I would actually buy if it drove well enough :(
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Larry Hill 5:34PM (12/09/2008)
I think it is awsome looking. Too bad they have thier head up thier as%$s as usual. Put a diesel in it!
freshforged 3:51AM (12/10/2008)
The writing has been on the wall wrt Chery for months now. But just because the Chery deal is dead doesn't mean the Hornet is DOA as well. As a reciprocal move to the Dodge sourced Titan, Nissan will be building the Hornet (or a closely derived subcompact) in Japan. No its not going to be the re-badged Versa (that will be sold only in South America), but rather a totally new top-hat over the Cube.
As usual autoblog comes late to the party with only half the info and the locals buy into the bs. Honestly I wonder what some of you would do if you couldn't bash Chrysler.
BoneHeadOtto 9:34PM (12/09/2008)
@Larry
uh you do realize that diesel is 50% more expensive now. Where i am regular is $1.60 and diesel is $2.40. If this hornet got the same mileage as an xD (34mpg hwy) the diesel would have to get 51mpg just to match its $/mile and that is not factoring in the more expensive engine. Diesels are great an all but they are not more economical.
In with brandon, the hornet should have been built. But unfortunately Dodge has no idea how to build a small car, or how to take a concept to production in a timely manner.
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