Chrylser's Future

[ChristopherJ]

I have heard that Chrysler are not doing to well in the market and that there bleeding to death DamilerChrysler. Its just that around five years ago, Chrysler seemed the best of the big 3 - GM, Ford and itself. (So I read). I remember reading in a local magzine about how Chrysler were killing Ford and GM at a certain Auto Show. The Concorde and another large sedan Chrylser did were great designs where Ford and GM's vehicles were pretty poor efforts at best. Chrylser seemed to have the guts to bring out some wild concept car and produce it where if Ford and GM did a concept they would knock it on the head early with some poor excuse. So my question is after all this babble? How are Chrylser's selling and how is there future looking with Mercedes - Benz? Over here we were going to get the 300M but now I don't know if we'll ever get it. The only Chrylser's we get are the: Neon, PT Cruiser and the Voyager plus Jeep's Wrangler, Cherokee and the Grander version. You do see the odd Voyager but where I live you don't see many PT's or Neons, they might sell well in other parts of Australia, I don't actually know.

[Hudson]

Chrysler's fine, as a division within DaimlerChrysler. They're not making the kind of money they were back in the mid 1990s, but they're doing fine.

The reason why so few models are offered in Australia is your country's odd law about requiring all vehicles to be right-hand drive. For a company like Chrysler who's products are primarily sold in left-hand drive countries, it costs a fortune to design and produce right-hand drive vehicles for sales in Japan, England, and Australia (the three largest markets for these cars). Neons are produced in the US factory in right-hand drive form. PT Cruisers and Voyagers may be built in Austria for right-hand drive markets, but I don't believe they are produced in North America that way. Wranglers and Cherokees are built in the US in RHD (again, Grand Cherokees are built in Austria for export markets).

The 300M is nearing the end of its life, so I don't think you'll see a RHD version. But the next generation of Chrysler products may be offered for sales in Australia. This would include the 300N.

Australia is not a big market for Chrysler ever since they sold their plants in the country to Mitsubishi (I believe).