I wonder, when you stop blaming Mercedes for Chryslers downfall and start blaming Fiat for it
When something is so unreliable, that they have to resort to Fiat technology to make it better, it says everything
When Fiat's responsible for the product, I'll blame them. Blame is given where it belongs - I and others have submitted proof that it was, in fact, Mercedes responsible for the failure of Chrysler. See prior posts - I cannot help it if you and other Germans wish to deny objective reality.
And don't drag out the "but you're just saying that so you won't have to blame Americans" b.s., either. You will see few complaints about the bailout that Chrysler received, except pro-forma ones. The systematic gutting of Chrysler by Mercedes is well documented and not at all Chrysler's fault - they really did get screwed by forces beyond their control. Not so GM, hence all the protest about that bailout. GM did it to themselves, Chrysler got hit by Mercedes and the US FTC that approved the merger (and in retrospect, based purely on the filings
should not have.) There is a difference.
If Fiat starts doing stupid shit like saying "We're going to replace the Cummins turbodiesel in the Dodge Ram pickup with one out of one of our sedans that's only half as powerful and half as torquey just so we can have our badge on it" which Mercedes tried to do, or removing perfectly good transmissions from design considerations because they were Chrysler designed and replacing them with their own, more complex, more fragile, less reliable and far more costly (especially since Mercedes was charging the Chrysler division full price for any parts they used!) designs, as Mercedes did, or saying that all Detroit-originated designs
must be fully scrutinized, altered and approved back in Europe every single step of the way as if the native engineers were idiots, as Mercedes did, then yeah, I'll start beating on Fiat. But Mercedes is responsible for the current state Chrysler found itself in at the time of Fiat's acquisition; all of the things and more are well documented and well known facts about how Mercedes raped Chrysler.
Under Mercedes, Chrysler went from having an 18 month design cycle to a five year one. They went from having the most desirable and hot designs, stylistically, on the US market to having the least. They went from having unique and different cars to having more boring, bland samemobiles than not. They went from having a well balanced wide spectrum of cars, from the fuel efficient Neon to the Viper, to being overly bloated with SUVs and SUV like vehicles
years after the SUV craze had begun to die off. The list of Mercedes screwups and failures goes on and on and on. Mercedes does
not fundamentally understand the US mainstream car or truck markets at all.
I know Germans like to blame Chrysler for the cheapening of Mercedes, but I'm sorry, history doesn't bear that out. Basic timeline:
1993: Mercedes announces that they will no longer be overengineering their cars and will instead strive to be the largest maker in the world by volume.
1995: Quality and decontenting at Mercedes begins to be evident.
1998: Mercedes acquires a massively undervalued Chrysler in their race to number one by volume.
Sorry, but the rot was already well set in before Chrysler was assimilated by Mercedes.