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Originally posted by the
That doesn't include the BILLIONS that Chrysler bled from Daimler in losses during the time it was owned by Daimler.
Hopefully by getting rid of that dog, Daimler can focus again on building quality cars. For whatever reason, maybe coincidence, the crappiest, lowest quality, least reliable Mercedes cars were built during the "DaimlerChrysler" era. Hopefully that era is now over.
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From what I recall, the Crossfire, 300 and a few other Chrysler products were built with M-B running gear. Dr. Z.'s TV commercials last year even bolstered this fact, IIRC. So if what Daimler produced were the "crappiest, lowest quality, least reliable Mercedes cars" during the D-C era, it isn't entirely Chrysler's fault as M-B fed some of its engineering directly into the Chrysler bloodstream.
Apart from that, Mercedes started producing less-than-stellar cars far before the Daimler-Chrysler merger. The first C class car in the mid-80s was, IMV, the point when the company began to drift from its tradition of reliable products.
Sure, the design of the Chrysler cars are dated, and a big-assed Hemi V8 isn't vogue in these Hybrid days. However, I agree this merger divorce is more about employee health care costs, which are something like $2 billion a year for Chrysler, and UAW constraints that have Daimler finally throwing in the towel.