Banking on Jeep
As Chrysler Group LLC continues its arduous emergence from last year’s bankruptcy, the U.S. automaker is basing much of its strategy for recovery on its Jeep brand. The success of these plans will greatly affect Toledo’s economy, because Jeep builds several of its best-selling models here. So far, the effort appears to be paying off.
Chrysler executives said this week that sales outside the United States of the made-in-Toledo Jeep Wrangler sport utility vehicle have doubled in the past year. That’s a key element of Chrysler’s plan to triple overall exports of its cars and trucks by 2014. Foreign sales of the Jeep Liberty, also made here, are holding their own, Chrysler says.
Chrysler’s affiliation with the Italian automaker Fiat SpA, part of its postbankruptcy reinvention, offers new retail opportunities worldwide. The automaker has upgraded the Wrangler for the 2011 model year – its interior, electronics, removable hardtop roof – to help prepare for the sales initiative.
This month, Chrysler dropped another tantalizing hint. The company reintroduced to its dealers, to what executives called an “overwhelming response,” a celebrated concept vehicle: a Jeep-branded, midsized pickup based on the Wrangler. Chrysler’s Toledo Assembly complex would seem the ideal place to build the truck.
Although Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told dealers he plans to produce the pickup, the company isn’t talking about timing or numbers. Still, the signs are promising.
A concept version of the vehicle has been kicking around for five years. Its elements are evident in the four-door Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, a big seller for the brand.
Should Chrysler green-light the truck’s manufacture, that could mean more work and expanded capacity for Toledo Assembly. The four-year-old plant and its United Auto Workers-represented employees have demonstrated their high productivity and commitment to quality.
Greater attention to Toledo would be an appropriate reflection of Chrysler’s comeback, this area’s role in the automaker’s heritage, and its contribution to the company’s survival. It also would highlight Chrysler’s continued importance to a domestic auto industry that itself is feeling its way toward recovery from its collapse just two years ago.
Toledoans must not succumb to the dangerous notion that the local economy will do just fine once U.S. automakers resume their previous dominance. The days of the “Big Three” are gone for good, and northwest Ohio must do much more to diversify its economy and reduce its previous overreliance on the production of autos and auto parts.
Still, a broader role for Toledo in Chrysler’s export and new-product plans would deliver a sizable jolt to local economic growth and job creation. How about it, Mr. Marchionne?
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