Alright, Mitt Romney. I understand that you’re a politician. I understand that, like all politicians, you are a liar. But leave my beloved Jeep out of it, asshole.
In case you’re wondering: Mitt Romney just released a lying ad in Ohio saying that Chrysler intends to build Jeeps in China, implying that all the Toledo, Ohio Jeep jobs are going bye-bye. Which is a) a lie, and b) a lie.
First of all, Chrysler has been building Jeeps in China since *1996*. That’s when they shipped the old body tooling for their Jeep Cherokee SUV over there and started building the old-style Cherokees. They’ve been building Jeeps over there ever since — for sale to Chinese. So Chrysler isn’t *intending* to build Jeeps in China. They *are* building Jeeps in China — and have been doing so for years. They’re expanding their Chinese Jeep factory, but to sell more Jeeps to the Chinese — none of those Jeeps are coming over here, most of the Jeeps they’re selling over there *can’t* come over here because they were discontinued here (and the tooling shipped there) because they fundamentally can’t meet modern U.S. safety and emissions standards.
Secondly, in 2006-2007 Chrysler razed the old WW2 Jeep factory in Toledo Ohio, which was dilapidated and not suited for building cars in a modern automated fashion, and replaced with with a multi-billion-dollar state of the art highly automated facility capable of making 150,000 Jeep Wranglers per year. Which is currently maxed out. That is, Chrysler sells every single Jeep Wrangler that they’re capable of making and likely could sell twice as many Jeep Wranglers if they could make them and market them overseas as is being proposed by their current CEO. So even if Chrysler *was* building a Jeep Wrangler factory elsewhere, it wouldn’t be to export those Toledo jobs elsewhere, it’d be to build more Jeeps *in addition* to the ones being built in Toledo.
Not that Chrysler is doing any such thing. Every single Jeep Wrangler is built in America — and always will be. Because it’s understood that this iconic descendant of the famed WW2 Jeep is uniquely American and it would be just wrong to build it anywhere else. They have added a shift and 1,000 jobs to their Detroit factory to build more Grand Cherokees, and have broken ground on a new assembly line for Jeeps at their Toledo facility that is going to employ an additional 1,100 workers when it comes online next year. Because it’s a lot easier to expand a current factory than to build a new one from scratch — the suppliers are already nearby, you have all the current workers available to train new workers, and if your current factory is already maxed out you can add on an incremental line and still have economies of scale. A Jeep factory that built only 50,000 additional Jeeps a year, likely what the market could absorb right now, simply wouldn’t be economically viable — you have to build *at least* 150,000 of something at a factory nowadays to make it cost effective, due to the high cost of the robots needed to keep assembly costs down and assembly quality up.
To summarize: There is no fucking way that Chrysler is going to abandon this multi-billion dollar investment and ship those jobs overseas, because a) it ain’t that many jobs (robots do most of the work, and b) the money is already sunk and right now every Jeep Wrangler that rolls off those lines is pure profit for Chrysler. Mitt Romney needs to just shut his lying mouth when it comes to Jeep, because he pretty much pisses off anybody who knows and cares about Jeeps when he uses Jeeps as a political talking point. Just sayin’.
- Badtux the Jeepin’ Penguin
Toledo is my home town and I worked for Chrysler for the last 23 years of my career. From 85 through 97 was great. The time under Mercedes was not. The time under the fucking idiots from Cerberus was horrible. Since 2009, Chrysler has had something they haven’t had since 1997 – a competent management team that is seriously concerned about the success of Chrysler.
Romney is a lying shit bag. He tripled down on his TV ad with a radio ad in the Toledo area. The Cleveland Plane Dealer called him out on it.
Today, Sergio Marchionne sent an email to Chrysler employees that begins:
“I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China.”
and then says
“With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009. Plants producing Jeep branded vehicles alone have seen the number of people
invested in the success of the Jeep brand grow to more than 9,300 hourly jobs from 4,700. This will increase by an additional 1,100 as the Liberty successor, which will be produced in Toledo, is introduced for global distribution in the second quarter of 2013.”
Romney goes beyond being a liar. He will say absolutely any god-damned thing that he thinks is pandering and might garner him one more vote. He’s the one who was eager to let the entire U.S. auto industry go belly up. At this point, I actually think he is a rather stupid man
Most people in Ohio will see through this. I hope it blows up in his fucking face. I actually hate this odious rat bastard more than I did Shrub.
WASF!
JzB
Sorry if I insulted rats.
JzB
Well, hate is a strong word, but him bringing my beloved Jeep into his political pandering is just beyond the pale for me personally. Let’s just say “serious dislike” at this time for me. Grrrr!
I’ve got one of the little larado’s , darned nice with all the comphorts that a 67 year old guy needs. 4, years old, and jeep wants to call it back for a trade in because they got more buyers then sellers. But a dang nice car.
Tell it, ‘Tux. Your comment should be mandatory front-page stuff so the LIV’s can somehow, some way, maybe get a kernel of reality stuck between their ears. Not bloody likely, but you know… hope springs eternal. Thanks for this.
Jazz, yes, your rat comment hurt us rats. We consider Mitt to be more like a boil on our ass.
Just sayin’.
coloradoblue -
I was afraid that might be the case – hence my sincere apology.
Cheers!
JzB
Dudes, really do you buy a car from Marchionne, Bonanni CISL (Bomba Lake’s
PIRANHAS)? From Lucky Luke Montezooma? FROM FIAT?? JUVENTUS??
Well, in this case long live Richard Nixon and RIP JFK and all Democats!
tux, have you seen that latest fashion down here in (Property) Taxes, er, Texas.
http://www.starwoodmotors.com/web/Custom_Jeeps
Kevlar spray?
Center, looks like pickup truck bedliner with some little bits of Kevlar in it. Bedliner is of course popular for repainting Jeeps that have more dents than straight body panels because its rough texture helps hide the rough bodywork and its durability helps keep it on the Jeep while going thru the rocks, but only in the home state of GWB, huckster supreme, could they put pieces of Kevlar in it and pretend it was something other than bedliner with pieces of Kevlar in it.
Labriola, under Fiat management Jeep’s quality as measured by quality surveys has improved significantly. There appears to be a real commitment to quality under Fiat management as versus the lip service quality got under Cerberus or Daimler management. I’ve been closely following an issue with cylinder heads on some of the Pentastar engines, and Fiat-Chrysler actually rev’ed the head to fix the issue, instead of shrugging and saying “we’ll just stock a bunch of heads and then make money selling heads after the Jeeps fall out of warranty” the way Cerberus did with the oil pump drive assembly on the 2005-2006 Jeep Wrangler. It’s not perfect management — Fiat does not appear to understand American car culture when it comes to modding our rides, for example, and has made some bone-head (and unnecessary) moves to make it harder for us to work on our Jeeps — but so it goes.
JzB, your comments pretty much match what us Jeepers saw. The Daimler acquisition was a match made in hell, they looted Chrysler to shore up their sagging profits on their expensive Euro-iron with little to show for it when they left other than an already-obsolete automatic transmission (the A580), then Cerberus finished gutting the company (one reason for the bankruptcy was that Cerberus sold the Chrysler HQ to themselves, then charged Chrysler outrageous rent to use Chrysler’s own HQ — talk about typical vulture capitalists!). Fiat ain’t perfect, but at least they’re trying to build a world-class car company, which wasn’t true of Chrysler’s past two owners.
Finally, regarding rats, rats are curious and intelligent beasts. That automatically makes them a higher order of being than Republicans
.
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
My nickel’s worth from a probably over-loyal Jeep owner of two of the old style Cherokee models, one from way back in the late ’80s for gowdssakes that has gone to the moon and is on its way back and the other from the last year they were made here in the USA: I will defend (and repair eternally) my rugged, rough-riding, gas guzzling rust buckets till you pry them from my cold, dead hands. Gawdblessamerica!
…..and, oh yeah, Willard can suck it.