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I have a couple of opinions on this. First, because automobiles are so ubiquitous in modern life around the globe, it behooves all of the manufacturers to ensure that they are as safe as possible for the consumers who purchase and use them. Cutting corners in design or materials directly affects the safety and service life of the product. A defect in an automobile not only jeopardizes the owner’s life, but also that of its passengers, family and friends, and everyone else nearby, including drivers and passengers of other automobiles. That level of responsibility cannot be dismissed or overlooked. It kinda sucks to be Fiat right now having to bear the financial burden of decisions made before they took ownership of the company, but that should have been calculated as part of the risk of acquisition even though the magnitude of this kind of penalty couldn’t have really been foretold.
If the engineering and/or manufacturing decisions that caused the defects leading to the issues included in the fine and sanctions were made by Daimler, and if Daimler had knowledge of these issues, and if Daimler chose to ignore these issues as hypothesized, and further, if Daimler did not disclose their knowledge of these issues to Fiat during the acquisition, then perhaps Fiat’s legal team could pursue Daimler for damages to help recoup some of this massive cost. On the other hand, if Fiat did have knowledge of these issues upon acquisition and chose not to be proactive about them, then they are just as responsible and deserve the fine and sanctions.
Many people, including myself, thought that when Daimler got involved that they would bring some of that “German engineering” and quality that Mercedes-Benz is famous for to the Chrysler product family and greatly improve it. While there was some improvement, I don’t think there was enough to be significant. I agree with Eric that since Fiat has gotten involved that there have been much greater improvements seen. Are those enough to save them? It hasn’t been long enough to really be able to determine the answer. This may be a death knell for Chrysler. If the fine and sanctions don’t do them in, has customer confidence gone down enough to finish them off through reduced sales and profits?
When Fiat bought out Chrysler, they purchased the trademark, current inventory, factories, and tooling.
They then created a new company, and started producing a new brand of automobiles using the Chrysler trade mark.
They did not recall pre-Fiat vehicles because they had nothing to with their sale or manufacture.
Fiat should fight this edict in court until the bitter end.
In my view, the recall is less about penalizing the offending party, and more about warning all manufacturers to take safety seriously. Also, I doubt the latter as a good solution that truly addresses the safety problem for the consumer.
Although the corporation may be a legal entity with rights and responsibilities, the mistakes leading up to the safety defects were made by individuals at different levels within the company. I doubt that any one of those individuals will see consequences passed on to them to bear. As a result, the penalty will create very limited incentive to create a better product for those that are actually personally involved in creating the product.
As someone with knowledge of the typical engineering processes, I realize that no one individual should have had the capacity to single-handedly design, test and approve a defective system. As such, Chrysler, and anyone else hit with similar fines, probably shouldn’t try to pass on the penalty down directly to those that may have been responsible. It will neither benefit the corporation’s bottom line, nor the ultimate productivity of their employees.
As Eric mentioned in the video, recalls and potential litigation is part of the calculated financial risk. You can be assured that this occurs in every conceivable business from pharmaceuticals to oil drilling to food production. The expectation of larger fines on the books surely encourage manufacturers to avoid lawsuits. The recent waves of recalls from many manufacturers is a sign that the larger fines (and greater publicity) are working. But is this really a solution we as consumers want? After all, longer design lead times –> higher costs to consumer. More of us will end up driving in older and older vehicles… I’m not sure whether statistics support my prediction, but it is not too much of a stretch.
As for possibly more frequent trips to dealerships for recall work; this can have problems of its own. For instance, I had to take my car for a replacement of cooling fan resistor that can melt and become a fire risk. After the replacement procedure, my cooling fan was left unplugged, leaving my car to overheat and become a fire risk on its own. Is the manufacturer at fault if my car caught on fire? I doubt that I would be able to start a lawsuit against the technician that did not perform the job correctly.
On another occasion, my compressor was replaced under warranty, and the system leaked out within the same day; one of the o-rings was missing. My experience may be anecdotal, but I should think that factory assembly would be more reliable for the manufacturer than work performed at dealer shops.
Bear in mind please that I work on cars, so I understand that things do go wrong. Not blaming anyone for mishaps. However, as a manufacturer, I would really want to avoid having to bring cars in for any kind of recall or warranty service. This will sorely hurt the quarterly, and not only due to the extra labour and parts costs, but due to the slew of miscellaneous problems that will inevitably occur during the recall work.
So, besides making for interesting headlines and tense boardroom meetings for Chrysler, how will the penalty help the consumer? Will this really make for safer cars?
In my opinion, the answer is yes, but the benefits may be meager.
A true and simple solution may not exist just because the problem is so large and almost intractable. I mentioned a few times individuals and their mistakes that lead to problems, be they in the design department, or the dealer warranty shop. Much can be improved if people took pride and personal responsibility to their work. This isn’t something that any one corporate department can easily address.
Apologies for the winded post. This subject touched on many things I care about.
Cheers
Chrysler has been long winning the battle to build the worst cars sold in the United States, and now they have been publicly disgraced. I have always been heckling my employers about the trafficking of Chrysler products, which have consistently been reprehensibly terrible cars. Now I’m using this disgraceful incident to push the dealer I work for to distance themselves from the brand, the same way that organizations distanced themselves from a disgraced Paula Deen, Donald Sterling, Bill Cosby, Rachel Dolezal, and all the rest before them. I think my work should contact the local media and publicly claim to be the first used car dealership to boycott the trafficking of Chryslers.
Fiat is also getting what they deserve. A company that would acquire and carry on the Chrysler product displays corporate irresponsibility that is indescribably immense. I felt that way when I heard that Fiat bought them, and I immediately lost any respect I had for the company because of it. Maybe just shows that they have no experience with Dodges. Maybe they figure that because people buy a lot of them, they are a good investment. Maybe they just don’t have a lot of experience with Americans. If there’s anything that baffles me about most of the fellow Americans I’ve been around all my life, it’s that we seem to love buying lots of really low quality products, while thinking the products are good. It’s why quality of so many things sold in America keeps going down, that it is tolerated by the consumer. I don’t get it.
Imho Mercedes should have gotten at least part of the fines… they were half of the former couple after all. Personally I’ve had lousy luck with Chrysler products… they break a lot and when they do they’re a massive pain to deal with.
Gm on the other hand I’ve had good luck with the chassis (they rust like a SOB though). Fords have been ok to me too. But Chrysler… grrr…
As I mentioned in a previous YouTube comment, I’ve never been a fan of Chrysler products by any stretch of the imagination. Now that Fiat owns them, I really don’t see them getting any better. As many of you know here in the US Fiat stands for (fix it again tony) and they also don’t have a good reputation for longevity and reliability in the US. they stopped making them here for a long time and recently started back up again but now I don’t know what’s gonna happen to them. I’ll give you another little anecdote about a Chrysler experience that my uncle had many years ago. He used to drive a ’91 Lebaron and in the course of it’s short term lifetime it went through 3 transmissions under warranty, in addition to many other things. Finally, one day the gas line broke and the stupid thing caught fire and that was the end of it. Based on the history of the car and their reputation, I wasn’t really surprised that this happened. fortunately everybody was OK.
How hard the mighty have fallen. Chrysler has a long history of fine products and innovation, but they’ve been busy tossing all their former goodwill out the window these past 40 years or so.
These days, the “Big 3” have become the “Big 2.5”, and it’ll be interesting to see who is going to end up owning the Jeep and Ram names, which are basically the only things worth keeping after Chrysler’s corporate tent finally gets burned to the ground.
In this case, the fines aren’t because they built bad vehicles, or cut corners when picking materials, etc. – the fines are because of how the corporation handled the recalls – more specifically, they knew about the problem, and didn’t follow through on their obligation as the manufacturer to effectively handle the issue. The NHTSA said the reason was “Chrysler didn’t make enough replacement parts or failed to provide “effective” parts after the initial recall” (the recall itself was a couple of years ago) – the company has admitted that they violated federal rules requiring timely recalls and notifications to vehicle owners, dealers and regulators.
Anyway – any manufacturer can make mistakes – and that’s ok – it’s when they handle the issue improperly that things get ugly. Granted, the cars were built long before Fiat came into the picture – but this fine isn’t about the cars, it’s about how the recall was handled, and that recall was made in 2013 when Chrysler was being pressured to recall 2.7 million vehicles, and ended up recalling a little under 1.6 million and inspecting others – Fiat absolutely was a part owner of the company at that time – in 2009, Chrysler was owned by the Fiat, United Auto Workers pension fund, and the U.S. and Canadian governments – they later became sole owner in January of 2014. So Fiat was definitely at the helm when all of this went down, and so the responsibility for having to cough up $105M should definitely fall squarely on their shoulders.
As the owner of a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee I have to say I am very upset that they are still dragging their feet on this, I got my recall notice but was told that because my Jeep has a skid plate protecting the gas tank that it is safe. Now there fix to this problem was to install trailer hitches on the jeeps and call it a day but mine does not even have that installed.
Yeah, the WJ was left out of the recall. I picked up a tow hitch from the junkyard for $35 for my 2000 WJ, you could always do that if you’re worried about it. The factory skid plate is kind of a joke, it’s very thin, like, think aluminum can just about. My brother has an 04 Freedom Edition w/ upgraded skid plates, his fuel tank skid is like 1/4″ thick, very substantial.
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