Chrysler's circuitous path to bankruptcy

Chrysler is in bankruptcy but is supposed to survive as a brand, with billions of dollars in help from federal taxpayers and a deal with Fiat, the Italian carmaker. It's a sad day for the company that used to tout its engineering prowess and that once seemed to have a leg up on other U.S. automakers in the struggle against foreign competition.

Over the past 25 years, I've owned four Chrysler products, putting nearly 400,000 miles on their odometers. At the time, I bragged about the comfort and reliability of the Dodge and Plymouth K-cars and talked my parents into making a Dodge Spirit from Cox Dodge in Wilson the last car they ever bought. But one by one, as the cars approached or topped 100,000 miles, key components of the cars — water pumps and air conditioners, primarily — failed. Since the late 1990s, my wife and I have driven Nissans and Hondas and now own two aging Hondas, which are still running reliably.

Taxpayers bailed out Chrysler once before, in 1979, when Detroit's chronic misjudgment of consumers' desires and a huge spike in gasoline prices left all three U.S. automakers foundering. That bailout paid off. It gave Chrysler, under the leadership of Lee Iacocca, time to bring out its new generation of front-wheel drive cars and to invent the minivan, which revolutionized the vehicle market. Chrysler paid back the government loan ahead of time, but after Iacocca retired Chrysler went up the wrong path again, resurrecting its 1960s-era Hemi engines and muscle cars and building ever-larger SUVs to complement its minivans.

But even in recent years, Chrysler did not seem to be as oblivious as GM or Ford. Chrysler never made a gargantuan Expedition, and its 1990s styling on cars such as the Dodge Intrepid was ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, its merger with Daimler Benz never paid off for either entity and probably helped bring Chrysler down in the end. Chrysler dumped Plymouth, the brand Richard Petty had driven to so many NASCAR victories. Its forays into specialty cars, such as the Dodge Viper or Plymouth Prowler, didn't do much for sales of more mundane vehicles.

Still, I think Chrysler's long-term prospects, especially if the Fiat deal works out, could be better than GM's. The automaker that once claimed 50 percent of the U.S. market and was being threatened with an anti-trust lawsuit by the Johnson administration, is weighted down by too many models that are nearly identical, too much corporate bureaucracy and too little attention to customers' interests. Recent news reports indicate GM might also end up in bankruptcy. Meanwhile, foreign automakers are producing more and more cars in the United States (my family has driven two made-in-the USA Nissans and one made-in-the-USA Honda, but our Chrysler vehicles were made in Canada or Mexico) and are more closely attuned to customers' demands.

Detroit, once the heart of American industry, seems to have thrown a piston rod.