Chrysler delays Toledo expansion

Sad but from what little I know of the situation understandable (?). Don't see why a company should expand when it's not utilizing what we already have.

Thought they pretty much closed down the Toledo plant. Everyone I know who worked there took the pay out a year or two ago.

Would enjoy seeing the Toledo plant working full steam with 3 shifts again and pumping out units if there are buyers for the product. The storage lot off 75 use to be full of beautiful new Jeeps, it's been almost a grassland for a year now.

Jeep is my favorite, so this whole situation is a bit sad, both from a fan point of view and as a person who sees how it is a bit entrenched in the local culture.

wolfman: have you seen those new Jeep commercials they are running lately? Shows old videos post WW2 about how we built great things in America? Then pushes heavily how Jeep is American made. Touching commercial but every time I see it I feel a bit uneasy cause I thought a lot of the work was sent to some plant in Mexico or overseas.

Re-read the article, I really hope they decide not to use the plant in Detroit and let the Toledo plant get back to working 3 shifts. Would be great for the local economy and a lot of people who lost their jobs.

Curious though, can they re-hire people who took a payout? If not that might open the door to new people getting a job there.

Looks to me that Fiat is looking for more state aid and possible concessions from the workforce. The international UAW is worming into the success of the Toledo Jeep brand. As you know Local 12 UAW is NOT a member of the international. The Jeep plant has a stand alone separate contract. We at Jeep do not share in job security that the all other Chrysler plants enjoy. If the Jeep plant were to close all employees would have no rights to bump into other Chrysler facilities. Retirees would lose their pensions as it is tied to the success of the Toledo Plant. The Sterling Heights plant was to close this year but a UAW save-the-plant campaign has opened the door of stealing product promised to Toledo. As I stated earlier Toledo has earned this new product from hard work the other plants are inefficient and are light years behind Toledo Jeep.

wolf: agree, hope it works out. Will keep my fingers crossed for you guys.

I hope it works out in the future for a fully operating Jeep plant. It is a Toledo legacy that shouldn't be given up without a fight.

Hopefully, the new bosses from Italy will give you guys better materials to work with and better engineered products to build. The consistent black-dot bomb ratings in Consumer Reports (meaning quality sucks) do not help sell these cars.

Not the fault of the guys putting 'em together, this is a major company perception problem that needs to be addressed.

Well you can blame DaimlerBenz for the quality problems. Their tightfisted spending on quality vendor parts led to these problems. As I said before the workforce has been very cooperative otherwise it wouldn't be an award winning plant. Quality is controlled by the management. We, the workers, have no control over vendor quality. Daimlers mismanagement drove Chrysler to where it is. Leadership was concerned about profits first taking huge risks for the long term viability of Chrysler. I can tell you when the new Wrangler was launched in 2007 workers had a list of about 1000 items that went unresolved. We hope Fiat takes these issues seriously for the sake of workers who have a long term interest in making the company successful.

People, those Jeeps get lousy gas mileage. Although it's not my place to tell a private business what to produce, I still have an opinion, and that opinion is that they need to stop producing gas-guzzlers and start producing the small, efficient cars that are so common in Europe but so fucking hard to find in the USA.

If the plant is only going to produce cars that can't even beat 25mpg, then I'd be happy to see it close down as an alternative. The USA hardly needs more cars that do nothing but suck down irreplaceable fossil fuels.

I used to have a 93 Jeep Wrangler that was getting around 20 MGP, had some problems with it so I sold it then bought a 99 Ford Escort which now gets around 33 MPG. Everybody makes fun of me because it looks like a girl car but I appreciate the extra money in my pocket. Both are Manual.

The Toledo Jeep plant produces a diesel version but only for export because of emissions. People don't want econo boxes right now there is a resurgence of sales in large vehicles. Until our fuel costs match that of Europe the consumer will not buy them. Chrysler's product mix is skewed towards high profit gas guzzlers which was part of the its problem when fuel went to 4:00/gal.

bumping this up, anyone have any new details since this came out.

Yes my sources tell me that Jeep will be getting a mid sized vehicle. Announcement forth coming.