Stupid Article Title......

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/...1127flint.html

One blurb about the Challenger,

I hope these are baseless rumors......

Later in the article he says how the Plymouth brand should be resurrected, let's hope.

 

That would be foolish, Dodge = GMC [:'(]. Many (young people) have no idea what plymouth is.

 

Yeah, that better not happen. They will certainly alienate more Mopar fans.

 

Thankfully I'm not amond them. I've owned a Plymouth Breeze and a Plymouth Sundance. I would love to see this brand come back.

"Introducing the new Chrysler Challenger". Oh boy. One that doesn't sound terribly bad, though still doesn't fit, "Introducing the new Plymouth Challenger".

 

Yeah I was thinking about this today, and I'm thinking...hmmmm.....Chrysler made a profitable and attractive company by the decisions it made in the 80's, one of which was to offer three Brands (I won't digress, as most of us know what the associated demographic targets were for each one), Daimler either assists or allows the Chrysler branch of its then Corporation to falter.

So in an attempt to do something, anything, it questions the judgment of those who originally effectively managed the company well enough for it to be attractive in the first place and kills off Plymouth. I hope there are some Cerberus eyes on this forum and reading Forbes. I think that guy was spot on with Plymouth is a needed brand to allow Chrysler to be the luxury branch again. A Chrysler voyager is not a T&C. And for people trying to drive something a little swanker, they need some queues and clues. Some need that reaffirmation.

Bring back Plymouth go back to the the pre-Cerberus days, and ditch some of their brilliance, it obviously didn't work in the late 90's and 00's. Why not shake it up.

If they've brought back the star, why not bring back some of the other things. Borrow from successes of the past and create innovative approaches to test in the future.

 

Some good advice in there, some I disagree with (I'm sorry but the Magnum failed because people just don't want a full-sized station wagon anymore). They are right that Plymouth should return, that is something I have been saying for a while. The problem that Chrysler currently has is that Plymouth is not actually the division who died, it was Chrysler who died but they let the nameplate live and placed it on Plymouth (PT Crusier, current T&C, base model Sebring, non-C versions of the 300, etc.) and Eagle products (300M, Pacifica, etc.). Daimler's idea was that Chrysler had too many divisions and they needed to cut down on them to (drumroll please) cut costs.

The problem was that Bob Eaton did a very lousy job of using Plymouth back in the 90s. The Breeze never had the V6 option and some years lacked the 2.4L I4 option, as a result it could not hope to compete against its competition at the time, the Chevy Malibu, Ford Contour (remember that ugly, shoty thing), let alone the Japanese competition. By doing this, they made Dodge compete against the Chevy and Ford models, instead of aiming for the Grand Am. Plymouth wasn't even given an LH car (in fairness that decision was made under Iacocca's watch) and missed the chance to compete in the larger car arena leaving Dodge and Chrysler to play as the discounters with the Intrepid and Concorde (which should have been a Plymouth). The Cirrus took over the base model position by offering the base level engines it normally did not receive (the 2.0L and 2.4L) in the last years as the Breeze was dying. The problem to a degree was that the Breeze was a disappointment when compared to the Acclaim. The Acclaim was very plan looking, unrefined, had generic interior, but it had three things the Breeze didn't. Those are performance (2.5L turbo), a V6 engine (the 3.0L Mitsubishi), a good reputation (it was rated at being one of the most reliable mid-sized cars in its day). That is why it was a success. Two of these problems were not limited to the Breeze and explains why the Stratus and Cirrus/Sebring sedans lost the momentum and success of the last gen K based, mid-sized cars. I hope they have resolved those two problems with the current mid-sized sedans, but I'm not entirely convinced.

The Voyager was still selling pretty well at the time, but during certain years they lacked the 3.8L V6 which it needed to compete against the Windstar and to stay ahead of the Chevrolet Venture not to mention the Japanese competition. If they wanted the Caravan and T&C to stand out by having a better top engine than the Voyager, they should have enlarged the 3.5L into the current 4.0L so then they not only would have been able to distinguish themselves from Plymouth, but it would have actually made them the leaders in the class of power, which they have been behind on until recently.

Plymouth's last coupe (remember that I'm talking about a hardtop coupe not a convertible) was the Laser, which was a rebadged Eclipse, was discontinued in the 1994 model. That car although nice did not sell very well, infact the Eagle version the Talon outsold the Lasor which was why they continued to offer the Talon into the second generation which was discountinued in the middle of its second gen due to slower sales thanks to dropping the badge. They should have instead tried to give Plymouth the same offering as the Avenger and Sebring coupes 1995-2000 to take the base level Sebring which was a complete strip down model at the base level (role up windows, no standard cruise control, etc.), this way it could have made the base level sales without hurting Chrysler's brand image and it would have had a car still for the poorer youth.


The Prowler (made the way it was) was a mistake to give to Plymouth in the first place. It was nothing like Plymouth: very overpriced, standard luxuries, high tech, etc. They should have either offered what was offered in the Prowler to Chrysler (or