What's new at Chrysler? Not much

Chrysler did a HELL OF A LOT OF THINGS RIGHT in the 1990s with ALL of their product lines. Then here came Daimler and tampered with it to their liking, doing more harm than good. The 300 was already too far along to change the styling, but they added "last-gen" Mercedes chassis stuff to it, Mercedes electronics, and other "hidden" things to "Mercedes-ize" Chryslers. Unfortunately, even when GM added Asian/Euro-style cruise control switches on some of their cars, a few years later they went back to buttons on the steering wheel.

Then they took the Chrysler Citadel concept and made it into the Pacifica "wagon". The Citadel led to the Buick Centienne concept "wagon". IF Chrysler had went with the Citadel, it would have been the FIRST car-based crossover utility on the market, plus at a lower cost due to the shared chassis with the LH cars. Instead, Daimler wanted it on the full size van platform, which added weight and such. The Pacifica is a great vehicle, but too bulky and heavy for good fuel economy.

Then here came Cerberus, with grand plans of "Rebuilding an Ameican Icon" . . . along with many high-priced former Toyota/Lexus people who obviously didn't know a whole heck of a lot about the car business . . . and it's history. The best thing Cerberus did was to get the former Chrysler people from the LH car days to come back. But too little, too late. I suspect that Cerberus didn't really know how much Daimler had "meddled" in Chrysler's product mix and such to create "dull" cars from potentially great ones. Thank heavens the new Ram pickup happened!

In many respect, "stale product lines" is an over-used phrase. "Stale" can be variable in its interpretation. In reality, many high volume vehicles are "stale", but nobody seems to notice. Kind of like all modern engines allegedly needing to be overhead camshaft engines. Anything else is "anitique", except that you never head that "antique architecture" comment about Corvettes or Vipers, which have the same "cam-in-block" architecture as prior engine designs did.

There are usually few things that can be changed quickly and easily from one model year to the next. I still believe that there are many more STALE designs and vehicles in the import brands than anybody would really admit to! Still, you only see that word attached to USA brand vehicles!

Regards,

C-BODY

You got that right.

You got that wrong.

Chrysler was showing the 300N concept car at the 2000 Detroit Auto show. It was a gorgeous car, based on the LH platform, with a V8 and RWD as the top-end model. It would have been in production for the 2005 model year had it not been for Daimler, who rushed the piece-of-shit LX-based 300 cars into production - stuffing them full of Mercedes suspension and transmissions, making them weigh 2 tons.

The Germans at Daimler wrecked Chrysler, and now the Italians at Fiat are going to bury it.

But it was Bob Eaton and the criminal Chrysler board of directors, circa late 1998, that deserve a special place in hell for putting Chrysler on the road to death while giving themselves golden parachutes.

The only thing that can save Chrysler (and this is assuming they're still alive in a few years time) is some combination of Kerkorian, Iacocca, and Magna.

one of the reason Eaton was looking for a partner company such as Mercedes was due to the fact they spent a year and lots of money on legal fees fighting off Kerkorian from buying it all up and taking it private. so he thought hooking up with a partner company would have stopped that from happening again. or something like that.

1995-1997: Kerkorian's failed takeover attempt pressured Eaton to find a partner

April 30, 2009 - 12:01 am ET On April 11, 1995, Chrysler Corp. Chairman Bob Eaton, alone in a company-owned apartment in New York, called billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, the automaker's biggest shareholder. It was 7:30 p.m. in New York, 4:30 p.m. at Kerkorian's Las Vegas office. Kerkorian owned 10 percent of Chrysler stock -- 36 million shares. During the two-minute phone call, Kerkorian told Eaton that the next day, he would offer to buy all other Chrysler stock and take the company private.

Eaton expected the news, after several lower-level overtures. He had ordered Chrysler's lawyers to prepare a spirited defense.

Incredibly, the two titans of industry failed to communicate on the most basic point. Kerkorian wanted to launch a leveraged buyout financed by Chrysler's own cash. Chrysler management would take part in the buyout and run the privately held company.

But Eaton and his top managers saw Kerkorian's plan as a hostile takeover. They were determined to fight.

According to the 2000 book Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off With Chrysler -- an account of the Daimler-Chrysler merger by Bill Vlasic and Bradley Stertz -- Eaton later claimed he told Kerkorian: "You know what I have to do. You know we can't join you on this."

But Kerkorian insisted that Eaton had pledged to stay neutral. He quoted Eaton: "We can't say, hey, it's the right thing to do, but I won't oppose it."

That phone call was Eaton's last chance to head off the takeover bid. On April 12, Kerkorian offered $22.8 billion for Chrysler. Eaton and the company bitterly opposed the bid, which dragged on for almost 10 months before the two sides reached a truce.

'Rifle Right'

The protagonists could hardly have been more different. The mild-mannered Eaton was an engineer by training, a buttoned-down corporate conservative who had risen through the ranks of General Motors before he joined Chrysler in 1992. Associates say Eaton was tough-minded and determined, but disliked direct confrontation.

Kerkorian, now 91, was the son of Armenian immigrants. An amateur boxer who earned the nickname "Rifle Right" as a teenager in California, he also was a skilled negotiator. In his youth, he persuaded the owner of a flight school and dairy to let him milk cows and shovel manure in exchange for flying lessons.

Kerkorian took risks to get ahead. During World War II, he flew 33 Mosquito bombers from the factory in Canada across the treacherous North Atlantic to air bases in Scotland. Many delivery pilots died, but Kerkorian survived. After the war, he used the money he earned from those flights to set up an air charter business.

Given the personality differences between Eaton and Kerkorian, perhaps it's no surprise that the Chrysler takeover war was long and bitter. Kerkorian finally agreed to halt his bid and not try again for at least five years. In return, Chrysler bought back more of its stock, raising the value of Kerkorian's shares.

Eaton had prevailed, for the moment. But the experience convinced him that Chrysler was too vulnerable as an independent and needed a strong partner. His truce with Kerkorian triggered a chain of events that led to Chrysler's merger with Daimler-Benz three years later.

Kerkorian's demands

In the meantime, Eaton worried about Kerkorian's constant demands on Chrysler to buy back stock. Kerkorian had ratcheted up the pressure by building an alliance with former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca and hiring former Chrysler executive Jerry York.

Senior Chrysler executives observed that Eaton was increasingly preoccupied with mounting an anti-takeover defense. He would raise the issue in staff meetings on unrelated topics.

In his eagerness to fend off Kerkorian, Eaton found a buyer -- Daimler-Benz -- that paid generously for Chrysler. But its beneficence came at a price.

Daimler ultimately wrecked Chrysler's entrepreneurial corporate culture, former Chrysler Executive Vice President Francois Castaing insisted.

Eaton "gave away the company to the Germans," Castaing said. "He created a dynamic that destroyed Chrysler."

What you've quoted so far doesn't mention that Kerkorian's demands were largely satisfied.

He wanted to see the dividends raised and see the share split and get a seat on the board.

He wanted to own 20%, and eventually he owned 14%. He wanted Chrysler to agressively re-purchase shares, which it did.

And what's more -> in 1996 he signed a 5-year "stand-still" deal where he got a seat on the board in exchange for not buying any more Chrysler shares.

So Kerkorian's threat to take over Chrysler was over by early 1996. Then in 1998, Eaton announces the "Merger of Equals" with Daimler. Kerkorian votes his shares IN FAVOR of the merger. He later finds out that it was a take-over because of a comment made by Joergen Schrempp in the financial times.

There was absolutely no pressure coming from Kerkorian in the 1997 -

1998 timeframe that would be motivating Eaton to hook Chrysler up with a "white knight". In fact, Eaton would have known that his time at Chrysler would be over if it was merged with Daimer. Eaton and the board knew they were selling Chrysler off, and what's worse - they knew that Chrysler shares would take a dive once Chrysler was de-listed from the S&P (as it would have to be once it was no longer a US company). They knew that many fund managers would have to dump Chrysler stock because it was de-listed from the S&P.

And they got access to Chrysler's $10 billion in cash, which Chrysler was going to use for new car design, but instead it was pillaged by Daimler.

And the emptied Chrysler's bank accounts while they were at it.

Which is why Eaton is going to hell.

i read somewhere that Mercedes was ripe to be bought out by Porsche then too so they were dying to make themselves too big and too unappetizing for Porsches taste.

By the way, wasn't Eaton the one hand picked by Iacocca to replace him and he know says it was a big mistake?

sounds like an employee writing