My fingers are too fat to type on a 13-inch laptop. I have to start proofreading my messages:-). On Apr 27, 2014, at 4:40 PM, Paul Stenquist <[email protected]> wrote:
> Oh my! You do invent your own reality, don’t your? I was there when Daimler > and Chrysler “merged," working on the Chrysler ad biz, so I’ll educate you. > Chrysler never owned" Daimler. Eaton and the rest of Chrysler management sold > out to Daimler for a huge amount of cash. Daimler was calling all the shots. > Hell, they sent Dieter Zetsche, who is now Daimler CEO, here to run the > Chrysler group. (Zetsche was a nice guy. We had a good time at Daytona when > Dodge premiered in NASCAR, but his loyalty was definitely to the motherland.) > At the time, Mercedes was not doing well, but Chrysler had 9 billion dollars > in the bank. Daimler emptied Chrysler’s piggy bank in a matter of years, then > left town, leaving a broke and decimated Chrysler behind. Cerebus dragged the > carcass around for a few years, then Marchione came to town and saved > Chrysler. Unlike Daimler, Marchione really means it. He wants Chrysler to > succeed. And they are. > > I worked on the Mercedes-Benz ad biz as well at McCaffrey & McCall in the > 1980s. (My commercial, “Interview” is still considered the best Mercedes spot > of all time and it won the Gold Clio for best automotive spot of 1990.) > Mercedes was on a roll when I wrote that commercial, but within months Lexus > and Infiniti came on the scene, and Daimler panicked. They told me they could > no longer be “Engineered Like No Other Car In the World.” It was too > arrogant. And they took a lot of content out of the cars so they could match > the prices of the Japanese cars. I bailed and went to Detroit, and Mercedes > quality declined. But the Germans are smart and they have a huge pool of > engineering talent to draw on. Mercedes has made gains in recent years, but > they never quite recovered. In many ways, they still trail BMW and Audi. And > of course it’s heresy in the PC world, but Cadillac is producing better > products than Mercedes for some segments — the ATS vs. the C-Class and the > CTS vs. the E-class. Mercedes has a future, but they’re not the world leader > they were in the 1980s. > > Here’s “Interview,” if you’d like to see it: > http://stenquist.org/Paul/MercedesEngineer.htm > On Apr 27, 2014, at 4:13 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Plenty of them around here. But their quality did suffer a bit through the >> years of Chrysler ownership. They were sensible to get rid of Chrysler, even >> at a loss. >> >> G >> >> >> On Apr 26, 2014, at 2:42 PM, Paul Stenquist <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Not many ten year old Mercs though. Intimately familiar with that company. >>> Unfortunately. >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
