2005 Chrysler Pacifica Touring Sport Utility 4-door 3.5l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Long winter means most automakers won't curb summer shutdown

A lot more happened during this latest brutal winter than days of snow and Netflix binges. Automotive sales took a battering. After all, going out car shopping when it's eleventy-billion degrees below zero isn't a good time.
Because of this Old Man Winter-induced sales slump, inventories are abnormally high as we head into the summer car buying season. That's led some analysts to predict that automakers will be more inclined to idle factories this summer, in a bid to trim some of the built-up inventory. Traditionally, American manufacturers offer up a two-week break in the middle of summer, although the burgeoning sales of the past few years have seen this practice become less popular.
"We're likely not going to see an acceleration this year," Jeff Schuster, a senior vice president at LMC Automotive, told The Detroit News. "We'll see production increases in 'pockets' but I don't know if it will be as widespread as in recent years."

Junkyard Gem: 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser Convertible Conversion

Chrysler started selling PT Cruisers for the 2001 model year, and these "trucks" (yes, they were considered trucks for American regulatory purposes) proved quite popular for at least the first half of the 2000s. A factory-built version with a convertible top appeared for 2005 (and later "won" the Top Gear Worst Car of the Last 20 Years award), but what about the PT Cruiser shoppers who wanted a drop-top before then? It turns out the aftermarket had the solution: the Newport Convertible Engineering conversion, which took new PT Cruisers and added a fully functioning convertible top. According to a discussion on Allpar, 54 of these conversions were performed, and I found one of them in a Denver-area self-service yard last month. Newport Convertible Engineering is still around, though they're in Huntington Beach instead of Placentia these days. If you want a Tesla Model S or Range Rover convertible, they'll build it for you. The NCE conversion for the PT Cruiser cost $9,900 (about $15,715 in 2022 dollars) plus the $17,000 sticker price of a new PT Cruiser, and included the needed chassis-stiffening modifications and a shortened, hydraulically-actuated rear hatch. The materials used look pretty good, even after 20 years of abuse and neglect. This one had the convertible mechanism ziptied shut in many locations when I found it. Naturally, I cut all those zipties to see if the roof mechanism still worked. It was very, very stiff but proved semi-functional (the zipties appeared to be an attempt to keep a faulty latch mechanism from letting the roof pop open at speed). The roof assembly weighs a lot, though you could spend an extra $3,000 to get a power-actuation system from NCE. This cab must have been extremely noisy and buffety with the top down at speed, but so what? Convertibles are cool. Mechanically, it's an ordinary Touring Edition with a Neon's 2.4-liter four-cylinder making 150 horsepower. You could get a PT Cruiser with a five-speed manual transmission, and many did, but this one has the extra-cost automatic. Starting in the 2003 model year, a 215-horse turbocharged engine became available. Rare, but not valuable. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This commercial is for the factory convertible, but you get the idea.

CEO Sergio Marchionne curses FCA spokesman for emissions cheating denial

WASHINGTON — Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne reprimanded the company's top U.S. spokesman for issuing press releases about Fiat's vehicle emissions practices days after Volkswagen's disclosure in September 2015 that the German automaker had used illegal software to evade emissions tests, documents released Monday show. Lawyers suing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in a securities case filed excerpts of an email from Marchionne to Gualberto Ranieri, then the company's U.S. spokesman, in a filing in federal court in New York criticizing him for saying that the company does not use defeat devices. "Are you out of your goddam mind?" Marchionne wrote in an email on Sept. 22, 2015, adding that Ranieri should be fired and calling his actions "utterly stupid and unconscionable." The company said in a statement on Monday it was "understandable that our CEO would have a forceful response to any employee who would opine on such a significant and complex matter, without the matter having been fully reviewed through its appropriate channels." The statement added that Ranieri's comments came just days after VW's emissions issue became public "and before a comprehensive internal review and discussions with component suppliers was possible." Fiat Chrysler was sued in 2015 along with Marchionne and other executives over claims it defrauded shareholders by overstating its ability to comply with vehicle safety laws. An amended version of the complaint filed in 2017 added claims about its compliance with emissions laws. The shareholders accused the defendants of inflating Fiat Chrysler's share price by hundreds of millions of dollars from October 2014 to October 2015 by downplaying safety concerns. They said the shortcomings materialized in 2015 when the automaker was fined $175 million by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and took a roughly $670 million charge for recalls. Plaintiffs filed the excerpts seeking approval to take up to 40 additional depositions, including Marchionne's. The U.S. Justice Department sued Fiat Chrysler in May 2017, accusing it of illegally using software to bypass emission controls in 104,000 diesel vehicles sold since 2014. Fiat Chrysler has held numerous rounds of settlement talks with the Justice Department and California Air Resources Board to settle the civil suit, including talks as recently as earlier this month. It faces a separate criminal probe into the matter.