[Big Mike]

"John I suspect that many feel that Fiat isn't buying Chrysler because they think they can improve it and make it a top performer. They are buying it more like a hostile takeover, raiding the goodies and discarding the rest after running it into the ground.
Why hell yes, they are going to rape the company.
They don't buy it to be good people.

They want to get every last bit of cents out of it and now."

Just like Mercedes did earlier.

[455Grandville]

Originally Posted by Formulabruce

In 2009 Dodge trucks ceased to exist. RAM truck corp was formed as a sub. of Chrysler. I DOUBT that anything related to them will be merged with fiat. I bet this isnt quite the whole turd just yet....
lets hope they keep Job here for the rest of cars.

That's what I'm hoping; even for the union guys. With Fiat buying them out UAW guys should be nervous. Italians are a special breed of slick businessmen

Originally Posted by goatwgn

Sorry to hear that about the Bonneville, (a lot of truly great cars were beaten by regular use and the tinworm). '60s and '70s cars do rust more so than newer cars, but if you live in some of the drier states, and keep the car cleaned and washed, with a repaint about every 15 years for me (due to sun baking the paint) they seem to hold up pretty well. New ones in Northern states rust out underneath, the brake lines , floor pan, etc, disentegrate. Have seen this under later model "Northern Exposure cars" that I work on from time to time. The entire underside is completely worthless on any car that has been exposed to salt for any length of time and hasn't been washed out, Not as noticable due to plastic bumper covers and such. From a purely aesthetic point of view, it would be nice if a lot of newer cars did disappear more quickly.

Thanks; car is still around but would need a brave restorer. My daughters TA has been a garaged TX car most of it's life; the guy who installed the exhaust was amazed at the underside.

Originally Posted by moto-d

My Dad's brand new 74 Olds Delta 88 .... two trannys by 60,000 miles, continual carburetor problems, early rust, 455 with zero nuts. His '76 LeSabre, low-power gas hog with power windows that liked to go up sometimes, other times not. Multiple A/C compressors. His '79 Electra Limited, great runner, lousy paint ... started peeling off by 1981. My Mom's 75 T/A was a decent enough car, don't recall too many problems off-hand. By the time I started getting mid-70s cars, it was the late 1980s, so they were pigs by that time and I don't really count them. Compared to the GM cars my folks bought in the 60s, the 70s cars were shoddier than hell ... poor fit, poor finish. Nothing personal, see you like the Grandvilles. My personal experience was not flattering to that big-bumper era.

The one I have I don't think has clicked 40,000 miles yet and I yanked the 200 horse 455 wheezer out and I machined and assembled a much healthier 455. I would sell it, but it's too sentimental being in the family since new. It just sits in the garage and seldom gets started these days.
Silver paint was supper crappy in the 70s. Seems around 80 or 81 was the darkest age of American cars. I'm thinking around 75 or so quality was sloping off and you mention carb problems ? I read up on Lee Iacocca about how the government really hurt our makers on emissions and would not allow our makers to collaborate together on programs to meet emissions. Lee wrote that he would have gladly bought technology from other makers, but that was not allowed. Additionally they had to scramble for better fuel economy, so the engineers had their work cut for them. In Europe Volvo, Renault , Saab, etc used an similar LAMBA type fuel injection system that helped emissions and performance. Shame our government restricted our makers working together on seperate systems, which did not help.

[moto-d]

Originally Posted by 455Grandville

That's what I'm hoping; even for the union guys. With Fiat buying them out UAW guys should be nervous. Italians are a special breed of slick businessmen



Thanks; car is still around but would need a brave restorer. My daughters TA has been a garaged TX car most of it's life; the guy who installed the exhaust was amazed at the underside.



The one I have I don't think has clicked 40,000 miles yet and I yanked the 200 horse 455 wheezer out and I machined and assembled a much healthier 455. I would sell it, but it's too sentimental being in the family since new. It just sits in the garage and seldom gets started these days.
Silver paint was supper crappy in the 70s. Seems around 80 or 81 was the darkest age of American cars. I'm thinking around 75 or so quality was sloping off and you mention carb problems ? I read up on Lee Iacocca about how the government really hurt our makers on emissions and would not allow our makers to collaborate together on programs to meet emissions. Lee wrote that he would have gladly bought technology from other makers, but that was not allowed. Additionally they had to scramble for better fuel economy, so the engineers had their work cut for them. In Europe Volvo, Renault , Saab, etc used an similar LAMBA type fuel injection system that helped emissions and performance. Shame our government restricted our makers working together on seperate systems, which did not help.

Lotta truths here. Considering what the emissions, safety and gas-mileage mandates on car makers in the mid-70s, they were trying, but it just wasn't there yet. To think, a short five years earlier, the engineers had one helluva lot of freedom if not entirely free reign to blow out as much horsepower as they could out of those mills ... then, boom, the switch got turned off, 75-100 horsepower at at time. The only thing they could really do was put ****tier and ****tier heads on these things to meet the new mandates. I'd have hated to been in their position. Exactly, 455s putting out at least 350 horsepower (even off the wheels) were now delivering 200 ... sucked.

[Hanzel]

The reason why Chrysler is going bankrupt is not because they making interesting cars nowadays. Chryslers development or RnD is very low last few years, and for that reason it is good deal for Chrysler. If they will survive, they have to start making good cars by buying knowledge.. (despite the strong type's they made decades ago) FIAT is miles further with making green cars. The choice is a " Chrysler/FIAT" dealer or " No Dealer" in your town..

[2002Z4CSS]

Chrysler will be foreign owned. So much for being a domestic company.
FIAT= Fix It Again Tony
They never made a goood car.

[Formulabruce]

Originally Posted by Hanzel

The reason why Chrysler is going bankrupt is not because they making interesting cars nowadays. Chryslers development or RnD is very low last few years, and for that reason it is good deal for Chrysler. If they will survive, they have to start making good cars by buying knowledge.. (despite the strong type's they made decades ago) FIAT is miles further with making green cars. The choice is a " Chrysler/FIAT" dealer or " No Dealer" in your town..

No offense Hanzel, but Fiat Sucks 'round the world. Chrysler has had some not so good models, they have been late to the table on some issues, but Fiat quality is not on par with MOPAR. Fiat wants a market and distribution for their "toilets". Here in the US they can get J-LO to do it. Smart cars outsell Fiats ... Fiats are the current day "YUGO"
That said, Im not happy with Nissan's current owner either, or the 5 GM Plants in China, but we here in America, "do" know what sucks.. hehe, Cheers

[JLHarper]

FIAT must be doing something right.....check out their past acquisitions and how much $ went into this Chrysler deal.

They have plans for Chrysler / line, and "gutting" it isn't on the list.....

If this business model works, it could position them as an Intl player in the automotive world.

People are using info and personal experiences regarding FIAT that happened "decades" ago, and not indicative of who they are this day and time and what they have accomplished.

If it keeps Americans working, and taxpayers from having to bail out another one, more power to them.

[455Grandville]

Originally Posted by 2002Z4CSS

Chrysler will be foreign owned. So much for being a domestic company.
FIAT= Fix It Again Tony
They never made a goood car.

That's what flew over some commentors heads in this thread : I don't see this as a good sign for UAW guys when Fiat has many modern manufacturing facilities worldwide that would offer much cheaper labor. Union or not, I don't like seeing Americans loosing their jobs. And when a big factory closes you have many other businesses impacted as well, it certainly does not stop at the factory !
Then of course, Chrysler could suffer a black eye for years with Fiats issues.

Originally Posted by moto-d

Lotta truths here. Considering what the emissions, safety and gas-mileage mandates on car makers in the mid-70s, they were trying, but it just wasn't there yet. To think, a short five years earlier, the engineers had one helluva lot of freedom if not entirely free reign to blow out as much horsepower as they could out of those mills ... then, boom, the switch got turned off, 75-100 horsepower at at time. The only thing they could really do was put ****tier and ****tier heads on these things to meet the new mandates. I'd have hated to been in their position. Exactly, 455s putting out at least 350 horsepower (even off the wheels) were now delivering 200 ... sucked.

I encourage people read any of Iacoccas books : our own government sure was not a friend of the American car companies during the 70s.
Read somewhere how GM engineers scrambled to make emission standards overnight and, as a result many cars suffered from being under powered and inefficient while at the same time trying to make the current MPG requirements.
Shame they couldnt have used a BOSCH type fuel injection system; those 70s Rabbits made somewhere around 75 horses on 89 cubic inches (vs 200 horse on 455 cid) and it was a reliable system that helped them meet emissions.

[455Grandville]

Originally Posted by JLHarper

FIAT must be doing something right.....check out their past acquisitions and how much $ went into this Chrysler deal.

They have plans for Chrysler / line, and "gutting" it isn't on the list.....

If this business model works, it could position them as an Intl player in the automotive world.

People are using info and personal experiences regarding FIAT that happened "decades" ago, and not indicative of who they are this day and time and what they have accomplished.

If it keeps Americans working, and taxpayers from having to bail out another one, more power to them.

Let's hope it does. But, with the government being $18.3 trillion in debt now, and having to sell GM shares at a huge loss I doubt they'll do any bail out soon. Hell, I keep looking for a "Going out of business sale" one of these days.

As far as new Fiats being unreliable ? I commented here about 2 or so years ago about a Chevy dealer having new 500s lined up in the service department for engine issues.

One of my contacts in the UK said he had a late model Punto that the engine went bad around 60K miles, and he found out it was a common problem. Pistons and rings took close to a month to get !

Also, almost bought my wife a Euro based late model Fiat based Alfa Romeo; after talking with some guys overseas they said they were troublesome, unreliable, and parts are going to be a hunt even in Europe.

Parts for Fiats once they become somewhere around 5 year old are an issue as well : goofy Italian tax laws make the manufacturer pay crazy money for inventory parts, so after roughly 5 years they get rid of 'em.

Sounds like a Fiat is still a Fiat -

[Formulabruce]

Originally Posted by JLHarper

FIAT must be doing something right.....check out their past acquisitions and how much $ went into this Chrysler deal.

They have plans for Chrysler / line, and "gutting" it isn't on the list.....

If this business model works, it could position them as an Intl player in the automotive world.

People are using info and personal experiences regarding FIAT that happened "decades" ago, and not indicative of who they are this day and time and what they have accomplished.

If it keeps Americans working, and taxpayers from having to bail out another one, more power to them.

While this is true about the past , talk to any current FIAT tech.... they still suck...
maybe Fiat will just ditch themselves LOL become Chrysler

[RA1John]

Always amazes me when a topic like this comes up, how people generalize & exaggerate information, rumors & half-truths. How one's opinion or personal experience is somehow the authority or final word on the topic.

How many people on this forum/commenting on this thread even work in the automotive industry (like, for an automotive mfg.)?

How many people on this forum are or have been executives for any of the automotive manufacturers?

How many people have ever been inside a vehicle assembly plant lately?

Apparently a lot.

To be able to broad-brush on topics like the quality of one mfg. versus another or what a buy-out or merger or acquisition really means, demonstrates the ignorance of people.
Ok. Fine. You had a car with issues once. Maybe more than once. How does that somehow include that entire company? Here's a little secret: All vehicle mfg. today generally build their cars & trucks the same way as their competition does. This includes lean mfg., quality, 6-sigma, world class principles, tooling, design & tolerance standards, etc. They all use many of the same part suppliers and have many of the same quality checks throughout the entire system.

Reminder: We don't live in a perfect world. While it's certainly possible to build a vehicle to extremely high standards, the average person wouldn't want to pay for one that was held to much tighter tolerances & standards. Even a Rolls Royce is going to have a defect now & then.

As for the Union. Personally, I believe they've served their purpose years ago and need to clean house. That doesn't mean everyone who is a union member is lazy, arrogant and corrupt. It also doesn't mean that this country would be much better off w/o unions. Guaranteed, if/when that day comes, you will see radical changes by corporations/mgmt. that do not favor the worker. Why? Because they can.

People, we live in America. Capitalism is king. If you owned a major corporation, do you think you'd do things any differently? Everyone from the guy who cuts grass to all those in the GTO part reproduction business to the CEO of Chrysler have one objective: To make as much profit as they can and with as little overhead & cost as possible.

With regard to Chrysler, I doubt their is a single person on this forum who knows what the real intentions are of Fiat or what the product plans are or even what the quality control practices are like at a Chrysler or Fiat assembly plant. I think you'd be surprised.

[arbys]

I'll stand by my post.

[455Grandville]

Originally Posted by RA1John

To be able to broad-brush on topics like the quality of one mfg. versus another or what a buy-out or merger or acquisition really means, demonstrates the ignorance of people.
Ok. Fine. You had a car with issues once. Maybe more than once. How does that somehow include that entire company? Here's a little secret: All vehicle mfg. today generally build their cars & trucks the same way as their competition does. This includes lean mfg., quality, 6-sigma, world class principles, tooling, design & tolerance standards, etc. They all use many of the same part suppliers and have many of the same quality checks throughout the entire system.

Generally is a loose statement and they are not using those methodologies if they are not carried through correctly.

Some companies do 100 % inspection, while some just do random inspection.

In some cases once a supplier has a good established record with producing a product (internal or external customers) they may go to random checking; and that opens up the door for poor quality. And how do you know your suppliers (int or ext.) are inspecting everything and following through the QC procedures correctly ?

In some cases they will just eliminate certain numbered data population samples as a bad shortcut (the UCL and LCL's) to simplify the process, and when they do the data numbers are like comparing apples to nuclear submarines. It's an out of control situation.

For the record many do not understand Six Sigma : it is more about consistency.

As for unions, maybe I was nasty about that, but I was once in one and was disgusted with how they protected the screw ups including a few who would get caught repeatedly sleeping on the job.

GM was not in trouble for sales; they were just behind Toyota. Their problem was profit margin and I don't see someone throwing on lug nuts or putting a seat assembly together being worth $68-73 hourly with benefits. I'm for a fair wage, but that's ridiculous.

You pay a fair wage, with good benefits, treat your shop guys well it costs less because you have loyal, quality people. Sad that many companies do not understand that simple principle.

[PonchoV8]

Six Sigma? You can get the same thing out of common sense. It's a way to sell classroom curriculum to universities. It's like Feng Shui. This is just one man in a large group saying what a lot of people say.

http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/...ore-myths.html

Debunking Six Sigma Folklore Myths
Ask almost anyone what is the No. 1 requirement for Six Sigma success, and he will say: top leadership commitment. It’s easy to look at Six Sigma successes like General Electric (GE) under Jack Welch and use them as evidence of the power of leadership commitment. The belief is so often repeated that it has become part of the Six Sigma lore, but does it have any scientific support? Sadly, I say the answer is no. That myth and several others do more harm than good when a company begins a Six Sigma initiative.
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Myth No. 1: Top leadership commitment

More than 50 years of research into how cultures adopt change, as described in Everett Rogers’ excellent book, Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, 2003), indicate that top leadership commitment invokes the so-called “Stalinist Paradox.” When this happens, Six Sigma—or whatever the CEO endorses—succeeds only half the time. This is less than a 1 sigma performance. As quality professionals we wouldn’t accept that from our processes; why should we accept it from our Six Sigma implementations?

A 2003 Quality Digest survey found that at least half of all Six Sigma implementations fail after three years. Could it be because average CEO tenure is about three years? I’ve talked to enough quality personnel in various companies to know that a new CEO can just as easily kill Six Sigma as support it. (Consider Jeffrey Immelt, who took over from Jack Welch.) What are they going to do to simplify, streamline, and optimize operations? They can’t seem to articulate what it is, but it’s something different.
Myth No. 2: Bigger is better

Although it might be nice to have top leadership commitment, it can cause a host of problems. CEO involvement also triggers the need to “go big.” Companies start wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling implementations. Unfortunately, this violates Juran’s “vital few and trivial many” observation. It invokes the dark side of the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the effort produces only 20 percent of the results. This is a classic violation of lean’s rule against overproduction. Remember this about lean Six Sigma (LSS): The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets.

Moreover, once the CEO gives Six Sigma her blessing, every politically savvy employee wants to get a Six Sigma belt because it’s part of the path to advancement. This triggers the demand for belt certification but not necessarily results. Once an employee gets one of many colors of the Six Sigma belt, he becomes more marketable elsewhere and often leaves for more lucrative jobs. Remember: It’s about bucks, not belts.

And finally, all too often teams flounder trying to figure out what to work on. Leaders are almost discouraged from telling teams what problem to solve. They often want to fix their customers, suppliers, bosses, or subordinates rather than the problems within their control. And most teams fail to use data to pinpoint the problem to be solved.
Myth No. 3: Training and certification

“Top leadership commitment” opens the purse strings for training. Too many Six Sigma implementations measure results in terms of belts acquired and teams started. These vanity metrics make you feel good but don’t really measure the effect of Six Sigma. Few companies measure Six Sigma success in terms of bottom-line, profit-enhancing results. Why do so many CEOs ultimately kill Six Sigma? Because it’s about bucks, not belts.

Poplar wisdom says that people need one or more weeks of lean Six Sigma training to do anything. I say that’s nonsense. Six Sigma training is designed for people who work on a manufacturing factory floor. With manufacturing accounting for less than 10 percent of U.S. employment, only 10 percent of these trained experts actually work on a factory assembly line, where their skills might be put to good use. Although that’s still a big number—roughly 1 million people—what about the other 99 million who work in services?

Six Sigma Green and Black Belt training involves the “long tail” of methods and tools that most people will rarely use. From a lean perspective, this is overproduction—teaching people things they don’t need.

Now I’m not saying Black Belts never need these tools, but they don’t need them to start solving problems right now. By the time they do need these tools, they will have forgotten their training and have to look them up, anyway.

The “vital few” methods and tools of LSS can be learned in a day, especially when applied to existing problems involving delay, defects, or deviation.

Remember this: Learning happens on projects, not in classrooms.
Solutions to the fairy tales

Rogers describes a more effective, but seemingly slower, way to adopt Six Sigma successfully: Involve the informal leaders in successful projects. Informal leaders are the employees who everyone else turns to for insights and information about operating the business. It might be a worker on a production line or a nurse in a hospital. These people are the “hubs” of knowledge connected to everyone through their knowledge. Malcolm Gladwell calls them “mavens.” Seth Godin calls them “sneezers.”

Once hubs experience the elegant power of LSS to solve a pressing problem, they will become evangelists and tell everyone else. Word of mouth is a very effective way of getting a culture to adopt lean Six Sigma; this is how ideas spread.

[Alvin]

For all of those who love Fiat, the Chrysler Deal, "are insiders", know the ways of business, and claim to be smarter - great, good for you!

Run right out and buy those new Fiats and park them next to your Aztec and "Smart Cars" because YOU know what is true and we should "be as smart as you claim to be!"

Jeez! Now in order to have an opinion or option on health, food, clothing, shelter or transportation "One has to be in THAT business first?" Give me a break. It's called the free market for another reason - not everyone is as gullible to believe marketing hype and BS all of the time. "Polished or not - a turd is a turd." *Exhibit 1: The Chevy Volt.

Now If reading that shocked you, reread it and understand that I'm not angry, mad or upset. Plain facts are that "the taste and memory of a bad product are very long lasting" here in the USA.

As to "the deal", as long as I have "no skin in the game" - more US tax $$$ bailout for Fiat/Chrysler - personally I could care less if they succeed or go out of business.

*And I post that w no disrespect intended to those who've worked hard on Engineering, Deveolpment and Mfg. on the Volt such as Keith, etc.

[JLHarper]

My comments were based on whats been widely reported and discussed in the business/financial world.

Tune into any Sirrius biz channels or read any paper / business rag and you will ultimately hear "something" about Fiat and his "master plan" discussed.

He needs Chrysler to get where he wants to go, and in this case (dealing with US Govnt and Union fund and future payments) had to show his hand.

Question is if he can pull his plan off.