The Return Of Fix It Again Tony

I remember the last time Chrysler was going tits up back in 1980. A knight on a white horse by the name of Lee Iacocca came to its rescue. His talent? Common sense and the idea for something called a mini-van.

In those days Chrysler products were nightmares. I went to work for a Dodge dealer back in 1978, and the quality of the cars were shocking. They made a car called a Dodge Magnum. The alloy wheels had these pretty clear plastic hub caps. The problem is that they refused to stay on the cars. You could walk through a line of Magnums and see them scattered all over the lot!

I remember opening doors and having the rubber seals detach and stick to the door frames. I remember trim panels not fastened property, gaps in the trunks and hood the size of the Grand Canyon. This being the days of carburetors, just about every car had fouled spark plugs so most of them ran like shit.

I lasted there three weeks.

Fast forward a couple of years. Chrysler was on the ropes, the government co-signed a loan. Lee Iacocca, Fords wonder boy if the ‘60s, took the reigns of the troubled company. He got rid of the junk and stripped down the design of the cars to their basics by creating the K platform. The K Car was a wonder for its time. It was uncomplicated and extremely practical. By keeping it simple the quality of the cars went up and so did sales.

My brother, Danny, bought a Chrysler-Plymouth franchise. I for one thought he was nuts. But as it turned out the cars weren’t bad. The K platform, though not sexy or exciting, was used for a number of cars from the Plymouth Voyager to the Chrysler Laser. We sold the crap out of those cars!

Though housewives hate them today, the Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager was just about the most amazing, trailblazing vehicles to come along since the ’65 Mustang. I wish all of you could see them through my eyes at that time. Nothing on the road looked like them nor was as practical. They were the perfect vehicle for the time, a home run on the sales floor.

Then Lee retired and the dark days began again.

No matter how much they try, all car manufactures tend to screw things up for themselves. Unfortunately it’s the American companies that get hurt the worse. The Japanese have a core of practical cars that are guaranteed to sell, so if they get greedy and start building big SUVs and trucks it doesn’t hurt them much when that area of the business goes south. No so the American companies.

Volkswagen built its empire on a practical little car affectionately called the Bug. Instead of building on the legacy of the K Car as VW did with the Bug, Chrysler abandoned its platform and the philosophy behind it to go for a plethora of new models that looked good but were mechanically iffy. Anyone have any experiences with a Chrysler 2.7 liter engine?

Along the way they were acquired by Mercedes, who soon realized they had attached themselves to a nightmare. I guess now Fiat will give it a shot, the return of Fix It Again Tony! Back in the day Fiat’s were probably worse than comparable Chrysler products.
Any Car Man that’s been around for a while can come up with a couple of horrible Fiat stories.

I’ve have a theory that Italian cars didn’t work here because this country is too damn big for them. Their cars were not designed to handle the rigors of L.A. rush hours or thousand mile vacations across America’s hot summer heartland. The broke down faster than any cars I have ever seen!

So I guess it comes down to how far Fiat has come since its hasty retreat form America thirty odd years ago. Can they stand the rigors of American driving? Can they contribute to the rejuvenation of Chrysler or will it just be SSDD: same shit, different day.

Only time will tell.

Talk to you later,


David