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Used ones can be bargains. They are a great car underneath, just not the right badge. Keep in mind how poor VW service is, traditionally.
GM's deal is expected to add or create 6,400 jobs. It also will provide workers with a $5,000 signing bonus, three $1,000 lump-sum payments, an improved profit sharing plan and a $3.50 per hour raise for entry-level workers over the life of the contract.
Sounds like the auto execs are still drunken sailors. They get a few bucks and out the window it goes. Why not, right? If things turn bad tomorrow, the "essentiasl nature of the Big 3 " and the "retention of millions of jobs" will just require Uncle Sam to reach in his pockets again.
Those vans were bad reliability wise, but the sad thing is they were still way better than the crap GM and Ford were peddling. The Chrysler vans were far more attractive and user friendly than a GM or Ford fwd minivan.
I also wouldn't trust it to a place that generally can't fix a Jetta properly.
No you don't! Because there was no Celebrity in the 90's, lol
probably a Lumina...
It was a nice vehicle when everything was right - super comfortable and pretty posh, but it wasn't exactly 100% reliable.
I remember our neighbor having a T&C van in the late 80's (89 ultradrive I believe)and the joke was the tires lasted longer than the transmission. IIRC, by 80k it was on its 3rd transmission.
Nope, for whatever reason Ford and GM were completely lost in that market. There vans were ugly, poorly designed and assembled, with poor reliability to top if off. No surprise GM and Ford left the market all together.
The Chrysler vans were far better overall even with the reliability issues.
Now my SIL has an '08 Caravan for a company vehicles. She has nearly 90k on it w/o any issues. Maybe the newer Chrysler vans are better. They seem to sell well.
Most to all execs are arrogant blowhards living in their own world, it's a prereq to join the club.
But for a dealer to even pull something like that, shows there are some deep problems.
Being a Mopar fan, I wish I could blame Mitsubishi, but unfortunately that one was all Mopar's doing. Mitsubishi had a 3.0 V-6 that was common in minivans, before the 3.3/3.8 came out, and was also used in some of the K-car variants (LeBaron, Acclaim, Spirit). It tended to start burning oil and smoking around 70,000 miles, but other than that I think it was fairly sturdy. The old Mitsubishi 2.6 4-cyl would do that too, as I recall.
In later years, they did improve the Mitsubishi 3.0. There was also a small Mitsubishi 2.5 V-6 that was used in the first-gen Sebring/Cirrus, and Stratus/Avenger, up through 2000. When the 2001 models came out, the convertible and 4-doors switched to the Mopar 2.7, and the 2-door coupes used a Mitsu 3.0 V-6, which was a pretty good engine by that time, from what I've heard.
Depends on the dealer. When I had an '01 Nissan Pathfinder, the dealer I bought it from was a Nissan, Jeep, and Kia dealer at the same location. The one time I had my Pathfinder serviced there, they gave me new Jeep Liberty as a loaner.
I thought the Uplander looked better, but I do see a ton of the latest Chrysler minivans out there. And they're good enough that Volkswagen just slaps their nameplate on them to sell.
Wagoner's been really quiet since he was fired. I'd be hiding, too.
The dealer I bought my 2000 Intrepid from also sold Chevies and Isuzus. Isuzu faded away, and then a few years later, strangely enough, they quit selling Chevies! At that point they started selling Chryslers and Jeeps. A couple years ago though, they dumped Mopar altogether and closed that dealership down.
Their main excuse was that Chrysler had passed through too many hands (Benz, then Cerberus, and then Fiat) and that they didn't have much faith that the brand would be around long-term. Secondary, they said that it didn't look like Chrysler was going to be building a fuel-efficient small car anytime in the near future, and with the way the economy was starting to turn, that was an important market.
His legacy is indeed nothing to brag about.
Lutz already knows the problems. He clearly exposed them in his book. The company is as much a mess as the cable companies and cell phone companies are today. They exist only to supply jobs for those there. Pricing, customer service, and services suitable for customers are not a consideration
Hopefully some of those pyramids have been neutered at GM (this is the GM discussion, right?). And hopefully there's someone who's actually responsible for whether or not a car sells in an appropriate number.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Regards,
OW
Regards,
OW
Regards,
OW
Took them a while.
Caravan debuted in, what was it, 1984?
The first Ody was small and didn't have sliding doors. It wasn't until they really copied Chrysler's formula before they started to challenge them, which was in 1999. 15 years later!
Toyota took even longer. The Previa was a mid-engined odd ball, quirky and very much a low volume niche product. Even the first conventional Sienna was too small. Toyota didn't really arrive until 2005, with the bigger gen II. So Toyota took 21 years to really challenge Dodge for the crown.
GM built the Lambdas, which probably sell for more money, so I doubt they care. Still, you'd think maybe one of those clones could have sliding doors.
Ford seemingly has 27 3-row SUVs. I guess the Flex is their closest thing to a van now. The Aerostart and Windstar tended to be trucky, and minivan buyers wanted car-like plushness.
Right now it's a close 3-way race YTD thru end of Sept:
85,830 GCs
83,188 Swagger Wagons
76,021 Odys
Dodge and Toyota are up, Honda is down. I think the new look went too far, shocking a conservative segment.
I don't think that's correct. Isuzu rebadged the first Ody under their name.
Honda rebadged an Isuzu as their Passport before they had any SUVs or trucks of their own. That vehicle was really an Isuzu and AFAIR was much less reliable than typical Hondas.
I agree, Mercedes was not infected with general wide spread low quality until AFTER the merger. The plague of being associated with Chrysler infected them, was predictable, and still lingers a bit..... It is a stench, like a dead body in the trunk; tough to get rid of.
There's a mis-managed brand. They went from having the best-selling imported truck (Rodeo) to extinction, under GM IIRC.
I think GM really just wanted their diesel tech, and tossed the rest.
I'm thinking I should hire a lawyer to sue the heck out of the idiots responsible for the first bailout, as they have caused me significant financial losses from a car company that should have ceased to exist long before 1995.
Chrysler has been a habitual also run in quality. But I think MB really got infected with Wall Streetitis. As business has gone global, so has the short term financial focus of Wall Street spread across the globe. Back then, MB was growing fast as Americans (and others) were more plush in their wallets, and leasing helped wannabe's get into them. The revenue jumps caught stock trader's eyes and then the push to grow the bottom line hit. Cut costs and increase margins. Its not just D3, look at a lot of the imports (and in particular Toyota). Of course, you see this self defeating Wall Street infection in all kinds of companies and industries with similar results. It almost always ends ugly and then take years to climb back. Maybe business schools need to start requiring a course in finance and marketing history?
What stood out about the first ML? Where it was built.
New plant, new design, new issues, new training protocols, heck even a new language.
I think there are Chrysler execs right now conspiring in a room some where to advertise that their new transmissions last 3X longer than the tires, and in the small fine print of the commerical it'll say *using 100 treadware track R-compound tires
Can't be any more reliable than a typical VW as VW chose to rebadge Chrysler's minivan.
I'd say VW has a better perception with quality than does Chrysler, but they certainly are in a group of their own with a lot of people.
I'm actually going to disagree with Fintail on that one. As long as the rental is from a reputable rental car agency, I think rentals are an excellent way to see how a car holds up under actual use.
I wouldn't blame cigarette burns on the car though, and they do tend to buy the cheapest tires possible, which makes handling harder to judge.
On Sunday I went up to a local used car lot, while they were closed, to see if they had anything interesting. Oddly, side-by-side, they had a Dodge Caravan, Chrysler T&C, and a VW Routan, so it was easy to compare them. Interestingly, the Routan seemed to have the nicest interior of them all. FWIW, they were all well-equipped models, with leather seats and such, so it's not like I was comparing a base model to a top level.
The newer minivans are using a 3.6 V-6 and, IIRC, a 6-speed automatic transmission, so if the long-term reliability holds up, they should be pretty competitive.
I wonder what would have happened if Bin Laden had chosen to crash those planes into the GM headquarters building rather than the World Trade Centers.
Then all the GM fans could have always blamed the Taliban for GM's woes.
I think business schools are pretty much churning out a product that can look a quarter ahead, at the most.
If you get a rental with say under 5K on it, it can be useful, one with 30K+ (and they exist), not so much. Who knows how it has been abused.
My last rental was an Impala with 4 miles on it.