Chrysler has announced a change of plans for the Viper. The brand was for sale, its sole Conner Avenue assembly location destined to be shuttered this coming December. Today, the company has announced that production will continue and that it's no longer wooing suitors to buy the marque.
I'll stand off to the side, so I don't get hit by the debris. Come Monday morning, every environmentalist in North America will be flinging mud.
My take on it? Chrysler's done the right thing.
Here's a fact: North Americans think the Detroit Three (and more specifically, the two that got government funding) should solely build small, fuel-efficient cars and hybrids. The problem is that they want someone else to buy them. Go look at the top ten best-selling cars in the U.S. Only one is a compact (the Prius, which really doesn't count), and none are subcompacts. President Obama and the EPA can force GM and Chrysler to build the cars that look good on recycled paper, but they can't force people to buy them.
No matter how much an automaker tries to break the mold, people have perceptions of companies that are very hard to break. In the public's eye, Volvo is the (only) safety car; Toyota is the hybrid maker; Saturn's the feel-good-hug (and still has plastic panels, according to many); Chev and Ford are truck builders; and only yuppies buy BMWs. And that really means that, no matter how many hybrids or small reliable cars the American manufacturers produce, they're never going to catch the Japanese in sales with those vehicles. So they've got to make their money where they can.
Fact: when people complain about inefficient gas guzzlers, they point to vehicles like the Suburban and Expedition. They never mention Ferrari or Lamborghini, and there's a reason for that. Those models aren't even on the environmental map. They're rare and they don't get driven much. I'm guessing the average Prius drinks more fuel in a year than the average Gallardo. And that's the type of company the Viper keeps. Sure, it gets 17 miles to the gallon. And how many times have you seen one idling in commuter traffic, six days a week, taking one person to the office?
On the other hand, how many do you see unsold on dealer lots? Dodge has built about 25,000 of them in 17 years, and has sold every one of them. And each one of the approximately 1,500 units it turns out each year probably earns the automaker as much profit as a week's production of minivans. It's profit that helps keep an auto company afloat, and will help guarantee that it will be able to meet its government obligations.
Chrysler made a decision that's going to be unpopular with the letter-writers and the opinion columnists. But it's made the decision that's going to ultimately be the correct one. You can build all the cars you want. The smart money's on building the cars people want to buy.