Chrysler’s one-time bailout fodder, the minivan, gets no love this time around. Auburn Hills plans on idling its St. Louis South minivan plant on October 31, a move that has drawn a protest from 600 local UAW workers. The St. Louis Business Journal reports that frustration among workers is mounting. “This membership has done everything this company has asked us to do,” says UAW officer Chuck Brodell. “We build a quality van. We made it more efficient and we lowered costs. What more does the company want us to do?” St. Louis is also being hit by a shift reduction at the St. Louis North plant that makes the Dodge Ram, causing locals to question Chrysler’s priorities. “There were 1.6 million vans sold in the U.S. in the last four years versus 240,000 in Canada,” says Brodell. “We should be building them in America not in Canada.” But the discontent isn’t limited to the United States. Minivan assemblers in Windsor, Ontario are pushing to increase production by rebranding the Caravan/T&C/Routan as a Nissan, plans which Chrysler say will never see fruition. “It’s a falsehood. I know for a fact it hasn’t been discussed,” Chrysler senior manager of communications tells the Ottawa Citizen. “Would Volkswagen even let us entertain the idea? I don’t know, contractually.” Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Nissan acknowledges (unlike Chrysler and VW) that the minivan market has “collapsed.” Either way, don’t expect any pro-bailout photo-ops featuring Dodge Caravans this time around.
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St. Louis unfortunately gets the shaft. They don’t have unique products (Minivans in Windsor and St. Louis, Rams in St. Louis, Saltillo, and Warren) so they’re stuck competing against other factories in a game of dodge the butcher knife.
Try as they may, Windsor is hard to beat. It’s easily one of Chrysler’s best plants for quality.
As for trucks, it’s the most expendable of the plants. Warren also produces Dakota. Saltillo makes the chassis cabs and it’s also the home of the modern Hemi engine plant.
Chrysler currently has three plants on the chopping block (Newark, DE and the 2 St. Louis’s). Even if all of those seven or eight or nine (Ha.) models are runaway successes, the chances of them being able to save all three, let alone one or two, are slim. Some unfortunate autoworker is losing his job.
Did the market collapse for Nissan and Chrysler because they can’t compete with the Sienna/Odyssey or are the numbers dismal all round?
hal: Dismal all around. Honda’s cutting back production too.
August sales were…
Odyssey – 15,546
Sienna – 10,244
Town and Country – 10,182
Caravan – 9,422
So you have a case like the F-150 vs the Silverado and Sierra. The Odyssey may take the top sales spot, but combined Chrysler is still selling about 4,000 more minivans than Honda, and almost twice as many as Toyota.
CommanderFish: “Dismal all around. Honda’s cutting back production too.”It’s amazing how the auto manufacturers can take a brilliant concept and drive it straight into the ground. Someone on my street has an old, eighties’ Chrysler minivan. Every time I pass it, I marvel at how that minivan has the correct proportions and, if not for the miserable quality, was absolutely perfect for its intended purpose.
But compare it to any of the best selling bloated ‘mini’ (more like full-size) vans of today. It’s no wonder sales were cannibalized by SUVs and continue to drop.
1.6 million vans sold in the U.S. in the last four years versus 240,000 in Canada,”
Yes, but there’s also three hundred million people in the US, versus thirty million in Canada, and the Grand Caravan has generally held the first, second or third place in Canadian sales where it’s not even in the American top ten, contesting the F-150 and Civic. Chrysler–excepting Jeep–actually sells well in Canada.
Of course, the Mazda5 and Kia Rondo seem to have picked up the slack from discontinued shorty Caravan, so much so that there’s now a “Canadian Value Package” version to staunch the bleeding.
Nissan acknowledges (unlike Chrysler and VW) that the minivan market has “collapsed.”
The poorly-designed minivan market has collapsed, hence the exit of the bottom-feeder GM Uptanarazzalay and Ford WindFreestar. The Quest had the dubious distinction of looking better than it actually performed. And no, the crossovers certainly aren’t picking up the slack.
That said, the market is weaker, as people have questioned whether or not buying a vehicle whose capability they only use 10% of the time is a wise move, but we’re certainly not hearing prevarications of this type from manufacturers of minivans that don’t suck.
The market has collapsed because they are too big, and too thirsty.
My wife and I will be getting am minivan once child #2 comes along – the problem is that other than the Mazda5, your options are big and thirsty, or big, thirsty, and expensive.
Bring back a smaller Caravan with a good 4 cylinder, and we’d be interested.
It always strikes me that the easy way out for an updated model is simply to make it bigger. It’s the focus-group answer; it’s a rare customer who’ll say that they could never use more space, and if you’re concentrating on reasons why people won’t buy a car model, ‘not big enough for me’ is almost always going to be up there.
But these kind of questions always assume no trade-off, and there’s always trade-off in a bigger, more bloated vehicle – something the customers are consciously or unconsciously aware of, since they didn’t buy the bigger car.
“Not big enough for me”. Sadly, that is true, albiet the opposite for me. My biggest turnoff towards a car is “two big” or “handlings two dumbed down”.