I dont see many of the new era chryslers with serious problems in the shop. I personally drive a Ram 1500 and most mechanics I've known drive something with a hemi or a chevy. My ram is a 2010 and the only issue ive had is 2 bad ignition coils.

Now for the serious broken shit I've seen. Broken valve springs, lifters (rollers on lifters) getting stuck and wearing down the camshaft lobes, ford and chevy are guilty of this as well. Customer ignoring a coolant leak and overheating the engine causing the heads to warp (not chrysler's fault) and some bad fuse boxes (intelligent power distribution module) ignition switches going bad (key reader will stop reading the key and the security module wont allow the engine to start. 7 year old chrysler evaporators (a/c system) are always a leak suspect. Though my 2010 has yet to start leaking and I have seen less and less chrysler a/c repairs over the last 3 years.

Honestly I have done almost zero repair work on challengers. None I can think of atm. Its all been regular maintenance. I will say almost all newer direct injection motors use the same bosch injectors and I've replaced quite a few here lately in other makes that are around the 5 year 100k miles area.

I was once a purchasing director for a Texas County. We had a fleet of 400 vehicles, patrol cars civ cars, pickups (light and heavy) larger trucks etc. One road dist insisted on Dodge PUs. Back in the early 2000s, Dodge produced some bad transmissions. The one dist had a rash of transmission failures. Vehicles used commercially often have less warrenty coverage than civilian warrenties. Dodge refused to fix the transmissions.

Do producers not know that Purchasing agents talk to each other? Our professional organizations , both natl and state have bulletin boards where we ask for advice, share contract language, share specifications, get legal advice and atty general opinions, get opinions and ask about reliability of vendors.

Not long after the bad transmission began to show up, purchasing agents began sharing info about the Dodge failures and their unwillingness to make good on a faulty product. Soon, PAs all over the country knew about it. I spread the bad word in my county and Chrysler products became verboten. That happened all over the country, according to comments on the bulletin boards.

Chrysler had some bad years following. Did the MBAs at Chysler not understand the concept of reputation? The rise of the electronic age and internet bulletin boards makes it easy to share info.

I don’t know the extent that talk beween Purchasing agents and subsequental “informal boycotts” had on Chrysler’s overall bottom line but I know it must have had an impact since PAs and fleet managers all over the US simply stopped buying Dodge trucks.

It wasn’t always easy as justifications for not taking the lowest bid had to be crafted for many juridictions. Dodges were usually the low bid trucks.

Selling a defective product without offering a fix should hurt. I think it did hurt Chrysler back then. The “hurt” may take awhile to spool up, but it will if the defect is egregious enough.

We did’t buy their trucks again for at least 10 yrs that I know of. I’m sure that many other consumers wrote them off too.

You’d think that MBA school would provide a few hours of instruction about customer service, reputation, reliability, ethical business practices and pissed off cosumers wouldn’t you?

Believe me, stupid design/engineering isn't confined to Chrysler. From one of my posts in the "auto stop/start" thread:

quote:

I have a 2009 Hummer H3 (3.5L I-5 engine) on deck waiting for a starter. 4.5 hours labor because you have to take off the left front wheel, inner fender, battery box and intake manifold, as well as moving an A/C line, which requires evacuating the A/C. There are other equally bad or worse ones out there.

Or some Ford V6 engines with an internal, timing-chain-driven water pump that has no provision to let coolant escape from the crankcase. Or the Toyota Tundra that needs the engine removed to replace the steering rack. Yes, they're making me, if not rich, a passable living, but thank God they aren't mine.