I don't think we pretend to drive a Benz or AMG powered Crossfires,, we like our Crossfires looks and the guts just happen tobe Mercedes! Why are Minies not sold at BMW dealerships instead of Mini dealer?are there any Bmw logos on them?
Anyway as for pretend no, would I have bought a Chrysler powered Crossfire V6 noway.
As for why rebadge, with Crossfire logos because I can !

 

What the car REALLY is. . . is a bunch of left over R170 parts that DaimlerCrysler found an inventive way to get rid of. They had just released the R171- based SLK 350, so it was a good way unload some excess inventory.

 

Yep, first thing draw my attention to this car is the style. Discovering it is a Mercedes is a bonus.

But I do feel like I'm driving a German engineered Chrysler.

 

Just passed the 4 year mark with Scooter. When he needs service, I take him to the Chrysler store because that is what he is. Luckily he hasn't required much service since the initial flurry of TSB fixes.

I rather liked the Cedes underpinnings at first but now they are becoming a bit of a concern to me. The first time I ever took it in, the service driver couldn't even open the key fob. Growing pains continued for some time before getting better. As we get further out, will we return to this point. If I keep Scooter for a few more years, will I still be able to find the factory trained service guy?

 

Excellent point Al. I fear that since the Crossfire is dead after 2008, there will be precious few Crossfire trained mechanics, and even fewer trained on the SRT-6. I plan to keep mine for a LONG time, and that scares me the most.

I've thought about taking it to a Mercedes dealer for service - after the warranty runs out - but I'm afraid of anti-Chrysler discrimination at the mechanic level.

 

+1 on that.
You can have any cop run the vin tag on your car and the LEGAL description of the car will come back as a Chrysler. That legal description will hold up in any court. This has nothing to do with anyones marketing department, origin of manufacture or parts used for assembly, it is a Chrysler. People might be proud of the parts used to build this particular Chrysler product, but two of the more important parts on a car are the vin tag and the title and they both get traced back to Chrysler.
I keep seeing the letters DCX used on the forum, what do they stand for?
Bobs I see the same thing with the Harleys, I even had a guy tell me his Pat Kennedy built chopper was a Harley. Now I like Harleys a lot but I sure wouldn't be embarrassed to tell people I had a Pat Kennedy bike if I had one.

 

Damn! How hard is this to understand?!? No one, and I mean NO ONE is disputing who sold the car. The legal identification and the VIN number have nothing - N_O_T_H_I_N_G - to do with what we're saying here.

No one denies that the Dodge Colt is not a Dodge product. But EVERYONE knows it was really a Mitsubishi - top to bottom.

Same thing goes for the Crossfire. Chrysler sold it, Mercedes designed everything but the body, and Karmann built it.

 

DCX = the symbol for DaimlerChrysler AG on the New York Stock Exchange -- i.e., the merged company as it existed from 1998 to 2007.

 

Since one of the poll options is "I think of it as a Chrysler", and I answered and gave facts as to why I think of it as a Chrysler, then I would say it has E_V_E_R_Y_T_H_I_N_G- to do with what we're saying here and is easy to understand with a little bit of reading comprehension, that you might want to practice up on.
To answer the question that I posed DCX is the (NYSE) exchange abbreviation for DaimlerCHRYSLER. So in fact Chrysler owned, at least in part, every part that was put on the Crossfire. So the underpinnings or anything else on the car are not exclusively Mercedes but part Chrysler, only through acquisition, but still part Chrysler at the time. Designed by Mercedes? Yes, but some of that was probably outsourced, if that's the case then does that mean that it wasn't designed by Mercedes? Built by Karmann? Yes, assembled by Karmann, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. If I take my car apart in my garage and reassemble it does that mean it's now an American built car? Technically yes, but that doesn't change that it is a DaimlerChrysler vehicle. I'm sure a lot of the raw steels and alloys came from China so does that make it a Chinese car? How far back do we go? Do we take it back to the mines where the raw ore was mined, are they responsible for the car? Bottom line is it's a car. It's a conglomeration of parts whose sum equals a mode of transportation. It's just not that critical.
I do have one other question though. How come whenever there's something bad to say about the car it's a Chrysler and whenever there's something good to say about it it's a Mercedes? It never seems to be a merger car it is always one or the other. Maybe I should figure out some way to make this into another pointless poll to try to get my answer. By the way that's a rhetorical question.

 

Now THAT is funny.

 

I'd much rather have a custom bobber (building one currently) with an S&S engine than an over priced, chromed out, heavy, slow, HD. I also would never call it a Harley, I'd call it a custom bobber!! Genuine Harley-Davidson What does that mean? Oh, that it is an assembly line, mass produced, dinosaur of a bike instead of a hand built, hand fabricated, one-of-a-kind bike? Great

 

I have no problem thinking of it as a CROSS between Daimler and Chrysler, not so different as the DSM (Diamond Star Motors) cars built during the Chrysler/Mitsubishi collaboration (which now Daimler has a 40% stake in Mitsubishi). The big difference being that Chrysler and Mitsubishi each marketed the result but with the DaimlerChrysler product the result is marketed only by Chrysler.
I also understood that Chrysler engineering group tweaked the suspension and motor tune characteristics and that it wasn't just a matter of throwing in old SLK power train and suspension parts (more so with the SRT).
It's not totally a Mercedes and not totally a Chrystler, it is a DC collaboration, that's how I see it. So I don't think about it as one or the other exclusively.

 

Actually, it was a great way to turn a concept car with exceptional styling into an affordable, yet refined vehicle with off-the-shelf parts to demonstrate the posibilities of the merger of Damler and Chrysler (that eventually failed). It just so happened that those off the shelf parts were those of a Mercedes that was replaced with a new model. Those left over parts were thoroughly reworked (contrary to popular belief) for use in the Crossfire. Once again, as with the Viper, PT Cruiser, and the Prowler, Chrysler had the cajones to take a concept car and make it into an actual street car with little change. Good for them!!

 

That is the main reason I like to think of my Crossfire as a Chrysler.

 

Oh, kind of like you Buell, then? Harleys are what they are. Yes, they're kinda slow and quiet when they're totally stock, but some people like them that way. But if you want to go faster/louder you have but to pay the "Harely tax" and all the speed/noise you want is yours for the asking.

And before you flame me about the Buell comment, yes I own one. An S1W signed by Eric himself.

BTW, make sure you post some pictures of your custom when its done!

 

Won't disagree with you there. It was a win-win situation for all parties involved. Including us! Chrysler has a history of innovation like that but also has a reputatioin of major suckage when it comes to quality control. Ironically, the Crossfire is the best car Chrysler has built to date -- and they killed it after 4 years.

If you want some real interesting reading, get on allpar.com and read about the dual-clutch, 7-speed, computer-controlled manual transmission they developed for use in the ME-412 supercar. Daimler-Benz had it buried because they didn't want Chrysler upstaging the boys back in Germany.

 

Well that sure is definatly an argument if you classify what a car is by vin than sure..

But in my oppinion a car is not a name, not a badge, not the seller, and most certainly not some legal information number (vin). A car is defined for me by those that built the car, those that designed the parts used for the car,.. and these people call themselves Mercedes-Benz, Karmann, or in some cases AMG... might even throw Bosch and some others in there, but definatly not Chrysler...

what has chrysler acctually done for the car someone enlighten me please?... all they did as far as I know is sell someone elses product with their stickers on them... it is like me buying a pack a malboros and putting a Sidez sticker on it claiming it is a Sidez product... imagine going to a store like Target and seeing every product in there ie. sony cameras, panasonic tvs all rebadged to "Target".. would not make much sense would it... cause all target is.. is a middleman for those companies... the same applies here..

PS. Pagani uses a Mercedes-AMG engine, and even though they acctualy did some of the tuning themselves to that AMG engine, Pagani has the desency not to rebadge that engine to something it is not... While Chrysler doing NOTHING for our engines easily covered them with pretty chrysler engine covers and tired to sell them as their own...

 

^^^^^ Ditto. Well said Sidez.

 

Sidez, its a really great car, but its still a Chrysler. It may have been built overseas but the fact remains that it was conceived as a Chrysler product and will always remain so. If in your mind you want to pretend its a Mercedes-Benz, go ahead. But in my opinion its kind of like putting lipstick on a pig.

Look at my original post: Accept it for what it is, drive it, and enjoy it. The Crossfire is a great car!

 

And our xfires are the baby of that marriage. The only true baby they made. And there has never been such a car that merged American technologies/engineering and German technologies/engineering.