Word: chrysler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first popular-price front-wheel-drive cars to be built in the U.S. Dressed up with carpeting, radio and white walls, they will sell at a base cost of $3,706 (tax and title extra). The price, combined with an overall mileage rating of 30 m.p.g., will certainly help Chrysler compete with imports like the stripped-down Volkswagen Rabbit, which has just gone up to $4,030. With its share of the market at just 12%, the lowest since the early '60s, Chrysler is gambling $350 million on the new models. First-year projections are for sales...
...Chrysler's 245,000 stockholders certainly hope that Brown's prediction is prescient. The third biggest carmaker has stumbled through some difficult years. Always highly leveraged (longterm debt has increased from $360 million to more than $1 billion over the past decade), Chrysler has had a curiously erratic record. Even though the industry has performed spectacularly this year, Chrysler's third-quarter earnings slumped 55.8%, compared with last year's. For the first nine months of 1977, Chrysler's profits were down almost 30%. Moreover, Chrysler expects losses of some $37 million in Great Britain...
Because it nets less than three cents on every sales dollar, Chrysler needed to build up its cash position, partly to finance refitting of the Belvidere, Ill., plant, where the new cars will be assembled. In 1976 the company sold its Air-temp air-conditioning division to Fedders for $47 million; the sale has now become the subject of lawsuits. Last month the real estate division sold several shopping centers, a hotel and some office buildings for $50 million...
...Belvidere plant, Chrysler has installed 20 electronic robot welding machines that do 92% of the welding formerly performed by hand. Production will be increased by one-third, to 60 Horizons and Omnis an hour, v. the 45 larger cars per hour that had been built there. That should increase profits, but it alarms a lot of union members because some 200 workers were laid off when the new equipment...
Senior executives at Chrysler are well aware of the consequences should their new models be viewed unkindly by the public. Product-Planning Chief Hal Sperlich is both cautious and cocky. "We are heading for an encounter of the third kind that can have tremendous consequences for us," he admits. Then comes the characteristic salesman's caveat. "Chrysler is the last of the big three to build a small car, and as my colleagues at Ford used to say, 'Last in, best dressed.' " Maybe. First sales results will be available in February, and if they are good...