A friend of mine [also a MoPar guy] sent me a copy of this anonymous
newspaper article, circa 1979 or 1980 when Chrysler was trying to get bailed
out:
The writing on the walls did not appear for most of Detroit until last
spring. In the case of Chrysler it was apparent from the start. As Fortune
remarked somewhat bleakly several years ago, every successful business is
founded on the concept of a product it can make or a market it can serve.
For Ford, it was building an inexpensive car for the masses. For GM, it was
a car for every person and purpose. And for Chrysler? Engineering, which
unhappily, as Fortune pointed out, offers no useful guidance to a product or
a market. The result is depressing for a businessman. Chrysler buyers are
a little older than buyers of other cars. Their incomes are a little lower
than buyers of other cars. Lynn Townsend, the former top executive at
Chrysler, complained in 1974 that half the company's potential customers
could not obtain credit. Blue collar workers were a Chrysler staple, but
they tended to be laid off during economic downturns and thus were not the
most reliable of purchasers over the long term. An executive of another
auto company put it cruelly: Chrysler buyers are losers, people who didn't
make it somewhere else.
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