Indeed.... Those were the dark times for JEEP.
The times that we never reflect upon and try to remove from our memories to preserve JEEPs dignity.
Sorry for the long reply in a sales post... But hey it keeps the post TTP where it gets views!!!
Honestly though the collaboration gave us allot of growth and forward momentum in the auto industry, this collab allowed Lee Iacocca to push forward the mini-van that was FWD and economical by Chrysler. Which obviously led the way for an entire revolution of family movers... This collaboration gave them a starting point for 4cyl power plants that were more fuel efficient and the transmissions to mate to them, this mixed with the modulization of chassis components allowed them to use the same platform across a few product lines. Specifically the K-car was used as a starting point to create the S-platform chassis "the mini-van", but then branched out into all of the turbo Mopar's of the late 80's. By the early 90's Chrysler had refined allot of what used to be Renaults technology (or learned from it) for the US consumer market and produced allot of vehicles that saturated the US markets. Think about all of the Dodge Daytona's and Aries and beyond, turbo and non-turbo. Think about how many Dodge Omnis before that! Its hard to see now, but at the time they had a very lucrative offering that spanned many market segments, and much of it at that time came about due to what the engineers learned through the Renault collab.
Its always interesting to think about things from this perspective, meaning what decisions auto companies made that reshaped the auto landscape, for good or bad. It still happens today, Chrysler took a MAJOR leap forward in terms of their luxury offerings over the last decade or more, this is thanks to the collaboration with Mercedes years back. They also finally began listening to what JEEP consumers actually want during the last decade.
Now we learned about Honda and Nissan collaborating to make an E offering. Who would have thought!
40 years from now, some geek, with free time on a Saturday will be commenting online in an analytical (but philosophical enough) way to make you think about what became of the merger...
