Oyada wrote:The impression I get is that Chrysler has never really recovered from the Lynn Townsend era; that period seems to me to have squandered Chrysler's reputational advantages - innovation, clever design, and above-average build quality (notwithstanding the variable quality of all cars during the 1950s and 60s). Sure, the company's share price did all right, and the wages were good; but the cars became ropier by the year, the sales volume fell and fell, and eventually the company adopted a policy of storing them up and effectively counting unsold cars as "bound to be sold soon, ergo sold". By the time John Riccardo found himself in command of the ship (and made the bold choice to Americanise the SIMCA/Talbot Horizon as the Plymouth Horizon/Dodge Omni), Chrysler was in appalling financial shape, without the money to do anything more than roll the dice, hope the European-derived machines kept the lights on, and beg the US government for money. Iacocca's persuasive powers, and the fundamentally good qualities of the K-cars, then managed to pump the company out and stop it from foundering.
Thing was, by then Chrysler's old reputation from the 1950s and 1960s meant nothing; the company was trading on being fairly inexpensive, having some interesting divisional cars (e.g. the Viper) and taking advantage of the minivan and SUV booms. It did well out of that, but funamentally, it didn't have enough money to keep up sustained investment in keeping its vehicles up-to-date and keeping build quality high. The PT Cruiser is a case in point, receiving one mid-life facelift and some significant, but not really fresh, mechanical changes, before dying in 2010, and suffering a reputation for variable build quality and fragility of parts that bigger investments would have cured (and which was shared by the Sebring). Underinvestment meant underimprovement, and in the end the public began to go elsewhere. It didn't help that Chrysler execs also tended to spaff money on the trappings of high office.
I wouldn't say that Chrysler's decline was brought on by Townsend. While he did make some bad decisions, the build quality was not that bad (at least for 70s Detroit standards), except for the Aspen debacle. Townsend's trouble was more related to the company not having the right cars (e.g. no subcompact like the Pinto or Vega or sporty coupe like the Mustang II or Monza in the gas crisis) for the right time.
Rather, the rot set in in the Iacocca years, with obsessive platform sharing (Chrysler Limousine, TC by Maserati) and the start of cost-cutting (e.g. A604 "ProbleMatic"). Bob Lutz only made it worse with his cost-cutting that made the short-term costs low, but ultimately ended up dooming the company to the role of a purveyor of cheap trash for people who don't qualify for anything else, as well as a lack of any properly succesful luxury models.
