Disappointment
of the year: Chrysler
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| Runner up: | ||
TVR: end of road in UK TVR was in chaos during the whole last year. First was the announcement to leave Blackpool. Later on Smolenski changed his mind and decided to stay. Then production stopped, dismissed all the 300 workers, announced bankruptcy and went into adminstration. But surprisingly, Smolenski bought it back from the adminstrator and "cleverly" avoided paying redundancies. Soon it was sold to American buyers but there are still many question marks. Production is likely to be outsourced, but where ? will TVR become a virtual car company ? chaos will continue in 2007. |
Lotus Europa S A pointless new model. Despite of a new name and the claim of offering GT practicality and comfort, the Europa S is just another version of Elise and Exige, or more accurately, the defunct Opel Speedster. It goes slower and handles poorer than its sisters. In terms of practicality and comfort, it barely improves from its sisters by a whiskey. Still, you will have to climb difficultly into the cockpit. The noise insulation, the seats, the equipment and trimming are nonsense by the standard of grand tourers. How can it compete with Porsche Boxster, Cayman, BMW Z4, Audi TT or Mercedes SLK ? |
Lamborghini Miura "Concept" Lamborghini has always been futuristic. No matter Miura, Countach, Urraco, Diablo or Murcielago, they always look forward. Unfortunately, Mr. Walter de Silva doesn't quite understand the philosophy of Lambo. As soon as he oversaw the design activity of this company, he produced this "concept car" - a replica of the original Miura. Very much like Ford GT mirroring the legendary GT40, the Miura concept mirrors the original Miura without any attempt to modernization. This is the first time Lamborghini is linked to the word "Retro". Luckily, the company eventually decided not to produce it. |
| Past
winners (losers): 2006 Honda Civic 2005 End of road for Rover and Saab 2004 MG Rover 2003 Cancellation of Jaguar F-Type and X-Type R 2002 BMW design studio 2001 Jurgen Schrempp (Daimler Chrysler) 2000 Mercedes CLR Le Mans challenger 1999 Rolls-Royce / Bentley split |
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6 years ago
our "Disappointment of the Year" award was presented to
DaimlerChrysler's chairman Jurgen Schrempp, partly thanks to the
"Merger on Equal" he drove. The integration between Mercedes and
Chrysler has never been successful. Apart from 2004 and 2005, Chrysler
group has always been losing money and burning the profits earned from
Mercedes. It lost US$1.5 billion in 2006, and the loss is going to be
widened this year. It will cut 13,000 jobs and 400,000 units per year
from its production capacity. But worst of all, DaimlerChrysler's CEO
Dieter Zetsche has decided to put the Chrysler group on sale. This
shows how critical its condition is.
The problems of Chrysler group
mainly lie in the lack of understanding and common interests between
the German executive and the American operation. The bread and butter
cars and trucks offered by Chrysler can hardly share any components
with the expensive Mercedes. Dr. Zetsche tried that in Pacifica /
R-class but both cars have been flops in the market. He even tried to
put an American design to the last generation Mercedes SLK, produced it
by Karmann in Germany and pretend to be a Chrysler. Predictably, the
Crossfire is another failure because it is overpriced and it does not
drive like an American car. 
In 2006, Chrysler introduced
some very bad cars. Chrysler Sebring, Dodge Caliber and Avenger are
unimpressive in mechanicals and build quality. Worse still is their
lack of good styling, which used to be the strength of Chrysler before
Tom Gale retired. Chrysler foolishly bet on truck-like styling for the
Dodge cars, believing it could lure American buyers. Unfortunately,
truck image is exactly a deadly sin when the world is being troubled by
high fuel price and everybody shifts towards environmental friendly
cars. The same goes for Jeep, which launched a lot of thirsty sport
utilities at the wrong time. The German executives made a lot of wrong
decisions.