I made two separate points:

[1] Chrysler came up with “new automobile designs, even new markets” Period. Stop. No mention of fuel efficiency, I did imply that this occurred after the bailout…which it did.

[2] Chrysler followed CAFE standards while Ford & GM did not…and got royally screwed for their efforts

I did not call minivans “fuel-efficient machines”, anybody can read my words above…why lie about what I said.

What innovation “new design” do you consider bigger than minivans in the last thirty years? FYI, hybrids were some of the earliest cars.

http://www.wheels.ca/reviews/article/542582

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/04/fuel-efficiency-doesnt-lower-demand-it.html

Fiat should keep Jeep and shut the rest of this freakshow down.

Let me take you down….

First, the minivan were not introduced to the world until 1983 (Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager). Second, I would hardly call them “fuel-efficient machines” as noted in the excerpt.

Third, the minivan is not exactly a huge automotive innovation — take a regular van, make it smaller, build it on a car chassis. If you think the minivan in going to impress any car guy, well, I got news for ya: It wont.

What the minivan was in the real world was a commercial innovation –repackage a truck as a car, and sell millions of them. It was a sales smash, a huge hit for Chrysler, but hardly a work of technological breakthrough or engineering innovation.

“Had Chrysler been allowed to fall into bankruptcy, it’s not too difficult to imagine a vulture investor obtaining all of the aforementioned assets, and putting them to good use. Just picture a refurbished Chrysler Corporation – newly recapitalized, minus the onerous labor contracts, pension obligations, and healthcare overhead. Its new owner would have been free to pursue new manufacturing methods, new automobile designs, even new markets – with all the advantages Chrysler itself had, but without the defunct company’s baggage.

A post bankruptcy Chrysler would have been as leaner, meaner and more cost-efficient, and maybe even more fuel-efficient machine than the rest of Detroit. Surely, they would have been willing to take chances on some new designs that broke free of the stodgy boring cars put out by Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s.” – Barry R

…is crappola.

Whatever Chrysler’s failings:

Chrysler came up with “new automobile designs, even new markets”..ever hear of a Mini-Van? It did not exist until Chrysler came up with it.

Chrysler followed CAFE standards while Ford & GM did not. Consider:

“…In the late 1970′s, President Jimmy Carter implemented CAFE standards to combat an oil shortage driven by policies of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The standards raised fuel efficiency in American cars by 7.6 miles a gallon over six years, causing oil imports from the Persian Gulf to fall by 87 percent. Our economy grew by 27 percent during that period. Detroit, predictably, figured out how to build more fuel-efficient cars largely without reductions in size, comfort or power.
The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That’s when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America’s domestic oil industry from gasoline price collapse. Ronald Reagan’s rollback of CAFE standards caused America, in that year, to double oil imports from the Persian Gulf nations and to burn more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market. Fuel efficiency is a sound national energy policy, economic policy and foreign policy all wrapped into one. Every increase of one mile per gallon in auto fuel efficiency yields more oil than is in two Arctic National Wildlife Refuges. An improvement right now of 2.7 miles per gallon would eliminate our need for all Persian Gulf oil!

Yet the Republican Congress in 1995 made it illegal for the Environmental Protection Agency even to study higher CAFE standards. The result is that America now has the worst energy efficiency in 20 years.”

http://www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/kennedy.shtml