Word: cars
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Chrysler has 15% to 17% of the U.S. car market; because it has only six auto-assembly plants in the U.S., it cannot tune its production as closely to actual sales as GM (which has 23 assembly plants) and Ford (15 plants). Chrysler's limited production capacity puts a premium on inspired market forecasting; the company must build relatively larger inventories than its rivals early in each new-model year so that dealers will have enough cars to sell. Early in 1974, Chrysler, like the other automakers, geared its production plans to the then widespread forecasts of a year...
Because that idle inventory cost Chrysler's dealers $2 million a week to finance, Townsend decided to reduce it fast-first by virtually stopping production, then by initiating the cash rebates on new-car sales.* Chrysler lost so much money in the last three months of 1974 because sales and production were running far under the company's breakeven level of some 275,000 cars per quarter (current quarterly production rate: about 140,000 cars). But the company's backlog of unsold cars is now gradually approaching a normal level of 80 days or so, which means...
...company has some other fundamental problems with market strategy that would not be cured by a quick sales upturn. Officials at other auto firms fault Chrysler for having tried to match GM in sheer model proliferation in the 1960s, but then being slow to meet the growing small-car market. With the Valiant and the popular Dodge Dart, Chrysler today has the largest share (32%) of compact-car sales, but its biggest product investment last year was in a costly redesign of its full-sized cars. Its one subcompact, the Dodge Colt, is built by Japan's Mitsubishi...
...banks led by New York's Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. The banks gave Townsend his financial cushion mainly because he convinced them that he could and would slash Chrysler's overhead to the point where the company can make money even in a poor 6 million-car-sales year...
...thirties, originally from New Sweden, Maine, who bears an uncanny resemblence in Paul Newman. He enjoys the winter. During the crowded summer season he talks wistfully of the isolation ahead: of being able to drive his Jeep up Route 6 and recognize the inhabitants of every car he passes...