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This is a article I seen the other day in the newspaper.... I will post pics of it that i scanned but if you cant read the pics I will just type the areas where they talk about the crossfire. Front page......The crossfire exemplifies the difficulties of chrysler merger with daimler-benz. Shepherd said daimler extracted whatever money it could from chrysler. From the inside page......Sheperd said the german company extracted whatever money it could from chrysler to recoup the cost of the 38 billion merger. The chrysler crossfire was an old mercedes benz slk that they werent going to produce anymore. That car could have been 10,000 less except the germans wanted to make a lick on it. The car never sold because of that, not because it wasnt a good looking car......


Your thoughts?

 

I think the guy is pretty well spot on. Even my dad, who was a Chrysler employee almost his entire career, hated the thought of Daimler taking over the company. He never believed, from day 1, that it was a "merger of equals" as Daimler called it. In the years leading up to the takeover Chrysler was considered to be the design leader among the Big 3, could build a car faster and more efficiently than GM and Ford and had a pile of cash on hand. Daimler crushed all of that, and crushed it hard.

And yet, for some bizarre reason, I still really like Mercedes Benz automobiles.

 

My father worked for Jeep his entire life and said EXACTLY the same thing, Mike.

 

yes Mike, the story on the street was that MB was trying to figure out how to market their SLK that was 10 or more higher than the Cross, and forwhatever reason the Cross was a better auto at the time, even using off the shelf old parts. Quandry. Plus the political infighting of the MB staff, pushing their own stuff over the integrated stuff and well, the Cross became the red headed child of the family and died a death that shouldn't have happened. There werealot of egos involved, and I think that was primarily the reason more than anything. So basically that story was right on. A real mess to begin with, made worse.

 

I think it's really quite unfortunate that M-B and Chrysler couldn't get along. I really hoped that good things would come out of their arrangement. For chrysler to build the crossfire from their existing parts bin would have been a disaster--it would have been a rwd avenger, which would have been so much worse than what we actually got with outdated M-B parts. If M-B was forward thinking enough to use the old R170 chassis, but the new 3.5L V6, I think the crossfire could have been much more successful. Heck, if M-B wasn't so selfish and sold the crossfire as we know it at a reasonable price, I bet M-B would have made more money on the project than they actually did!

Due to my age, I never really knew much of anything that occurred before 1980. I remember looking at Chrysler products from say ~1985 through present day and while they had some really neat ideas between 1985 and say 1995) (GLH-S, Daytona with the neat VNT turbo, convertible shelby dakota, the viper) most of those cars were built like junk. They just were not quality engineering even if the basic ideas were fantastic. During the 80's this is when my impressionable mind got turned on to european cars, which to me were not only interesting in their own right, but also really well built---and you paid for it!

I really, really, really wanted to hope more than anything that the relationship between chrysler and M-B would yield products with much of that chrysler pizzazz, but more M-B build quality and attention to detail. Cars like the 300 and crossfire were real bright lights to me back at the beginning of the century. It really bothered me that these two companies just couldn't get it together because of the damn German arrogance and stubborness--something that I appreciate, oddly enough, in German cars, but not so much in an actual business relationship (which is probably why I still like M-B cars, but thinking of what they did to Chrysler makes me a bit nauseous). I was in Germany and toured the Mercedes museum and engine assembly factory that they have in Stuttgart right when M-B was deciding how to rename themselves after the mess with Chrysler. It was odd going to their HQ and still seeing Daimler-Chrysler on the front buildings. It shocked me a couple weeks ago when I saw the door jamb of my buddy's last generation M-B E63 AMG that also said Daimler-Chrysler.

I am cautiously optimistic with Fiat however. I have been generally supportive of what little information has been shared with the public since they have started trying to run things. However, unlike the situation with M-B, I'm not really all that keen on driving something with Fiat DNA. That brand even in Europe is still considered to be fairly unreliable. Maybe one could even call them the european chrysler in that they have great designs (I would love to own an Alfa Brera despite how much of a nightmare it might be and how it looks much better to drive than it really is [from what I;ve read anyway]) but the quality just isn't there. I just hope that this doesn't turn into a suicide pact for either company. Part of me is quite excited to see the Fiat 500 running around the US though!

 

there is no such thing as a "merger of equals". there is always one more powerful than the other.

 

Not to mention that they would not even allow chrysler to put accurate specifications on their cars because it might step on the toes of some of the higher dollar mercedes.

SRT --> 330HP
SLK32 --> 349HP

 

The reason the Crossfire failed was simply a matter of price.....plain and simple. Chrysler hasn't been considered a player in the $40k - $50k range ever, much less for a 2 seater. When you look at the types of cars in this price point at the time they were sold there was a lot of established competition. For just a little more you could have a BMW, Mercedes, Audi, etc. All are established premium brands. Looking at the cars in the Crossfire's class like the S2000, Miata, 350Z, and later the Solstice / Sky, the Crossfire way way overpriced. People simply weren't ready to pay damn near $50k for a Chrysler that was basically viewed as a third car / weekend toy.

One of the biggest problems with the MB / Chrysler merger was the timeline that they used. There was not a specific date that they were fully merged, it was a multi-tiered merger. When you look back at how it happened, MB took control over Chrysler's financials before they took over the rest of the company. In effect, MB used Chrysler's cash reserves to buy Chrysler. This alienated everyone on the Chrysler side right from the get go.

As far as Fiat is concerned.....the merger is going much better. Cerberus was a terrible owner, much like when AMF owned Harley Davidson. At least Fiat knows about running a automobile business, not just investing.

BTW.... here in Detroit I have already seen Fiat 500's running around....... they look like little deathtraps to me.