Rick Wagoner Products Quotations

We've been able to use NAFTA. We import a lot more products to fill niches. We don't have to assemble them locally. We've consolidated a lot around pickup trucks. Rather than build everything to sell in Mexico, you can ship finished products back and forth. You get the production efficiencies of scale.

This really highlights one of the weaknesses of our business model is too much reliance on those products (large SUVs and pickups) for profit and not enough profitability from those other products,

That's because a couple products represent a larger percentage of the total at Chrysler than at GM. That can be an advantage and a curse, in terms of sales going up or down based on the results of a couple cars.

We have to offer products people want to buy, not have to buy,

The good news is, we know what we need to do to be successful in the business. What we need to do is get products that people are excited about and price them the right way, supported by the right kind of cost structure, and I think in that sense it's moving pretty good.

We are very pleased with the market's reaction to our launch products. In the first three months of the year, our new products accounted for about 30 per cent of our total sales ? more than double where we were a couple of years ago.

If you look from 1992 to 1997, we've really reduced the number of car models from more than 100 to about 81. Our strategy is to have the right number of products. Segment the brands better. There's a lot of work being done on the distribution side of the business. And the data's showing that our new products are doing a very decent job in the market.

The industry sales mix is shifting away from the larger, higher-profit vehicles, even pickups, ... reflects too much reliance on those products for profitability.