ORIGINAL: Cuda340
Jim Press will come on board when the company is in the midst of a restructuring and expects to shed 13,000 hourly and salaried jobs by 2009.
I believe the 13,000 positions referred to is based on the elimination of MOPAR and the UAW agreement recently ratified and soon to be implemented. Since Jim Press won't be head of Sales & Marketing until September 15th, 2007, and his department is not directly involved in Production, the "work force" numbers / reductions mentioned are inconsequential to his position. That would be more in the realm of LaSorda and Cerberus' business plan.
The Reuters report is wide open to interpretation. Unless we had DCX's prior marketing and production plan for the Challenger to compare to Cerberus' (which we also don't have), we have no idea how much the intended production has been "scaled back". DCX may have intended to produce far more units originally than anyone predicted. In comparison, Cerberus may be planning to produce far more units than what any of us think of as a "limited production run". Obviously, they're looking at recovering their R & D and production investment, and make a profit as well. Issuing the Challenger on a limited run, low production and high markup basis at this point would be an ill-advised gamble for a company trying to get back into the black. They know they have a potential winner here that can help them achieve that if they play their hand properly.
There are a lot of changes taking place at LLC and they "look" like they're intended to go in the right direction for the best interest of the company. As the company gets stronger, the consumer benefits in a myriad of ways.
I'm not going to jump to conclusions anytime soon. Like changing a Presidential Administration, it takes time for the new leadership's plan to be formed, put in place, impact the economy (company's financial condition), and recover losses from previous administrations/mis-management. Chrysler didn't get into a bind overnight - the solution won't happen that way either.
As for the Challenger, I'm sure LLC see this as just one tool in a fairly large tool-box to repair damage done over many years. And tools don't help you if you don't use them properly. Having Jim Press on board will almost guarantee that the Challenger will be produced and marketed to LLC's greatest benefit. Hopefully, it will be to ours as well.