@saforwardlook, more great information. Thanks!
As to "cost cutting", it happened everywhere, especially at GM. With GM, by observation, once they got the car approved for production (and "end of assy line production costs"), they then put "the good stuff" into an option package that was easily marketed to dealers to get them to order their vehicles with this stuff on them. THEN, some of these upgrade packages were then advocated to the rental car customers, who needed cars which didn't break or tear up under their customers' use/abuse. Rent car companies need their cars on the road rather than in the shop. If certain brands/models of vehicles can't do that, they don't get re-ordered, no matter the brand or model, but they can seek similar vehicles from other OEMs, to fill their needs in the particular class of vehicle.
Rental cars are actually "paid test drive vehicles". If a happy Chrysler owner might end up with a National Car Rental Impala, that's an unadmitted to "test drive" for them. IF that customer has a good experience with the Impala, also comparing it to the Chrysler product they own, next time they want a new car, they might look for a Impala instead of a Chrysler product, by observation. Or if a Chevy owner might have ended up at Thrifty or Dollar car rental (both of whom had majority ownership by the old Chrysler Corp, meaning that 90% of their total fleet was Chrysler products), that dissatisfied GM owner would get to "extended test drive" a Chrysler LH car. Having a good experience there, he could look for an LH car next time around. Chrysler KNEW this and did promotions via Dollar and Thrifty to get people to drive their cars, even dropping first-production cars at major airports at the first of the model year. To get the cars into circulation so additional data could be gleaned from them, plus customer reactions. GM also did promotions with National, too. PLUS, all of these cars went into the used car auctions when a certain mileage limit was reached. Resale value was important too, just as with a normal customer.
I have always liked Chrysler products for their "engineering to a higher degree of execution" orientation. But as the middle 1970s progressed, with all of the recalls for "flaky things" where no problems had happened previously, I knew something was up. Slant 6 carb base gaskets had never been I issue, but obviously somebody bought some "cheap ones" that didn't hole up well. Which helped give the Volare/Aspen platform the distinction of having more recalls than any other new car. Not good. But these things started in the earlier 1970s, as I later determined from what I came to realize. I had already come to perceive that one of Chrysler's flakier "assets" was a dealer network whose service depts were not as good as they should be, especially in the larger metro markets. Whereas the service dept in our local, long-time dealer, was very good. As was the service dept at Fenner Tubbs in Lubbock, where I took the '66 for some items when I was in college. Back then, it seemed that the average "life" of a Chrysler Corp dealer in DFW was about 3 years, but in the other smaller metro areas of TX, with a more small-town orientation, where customers were more valued, the dealers lasted much longer, even in tough times.
End result, if the build quality was not the best, that's what the customer got. Rattles, wind noise, etc. Magnify that if the dealer did not order things like factory undercoat w/hood pad. So the cars had a junky feel to them. All that would have taken is about a hour with some sockets/wrenches to tighten every visible body attachment bolt/nut and some minor tweaks for weatherstripping, but you had to let the customer complain and a warranty service order was written for it to happen. In theory, how the car rolled off of the transport, with some cleanup and checks, should have been enough. For GM and Ford, it mostly was, but not for Chrysler products, back then.
As I later learned, it's not that the customer had issues with their vehicles, it was how well the dealer took care of them when they did. Smaller dealers tended to do better than the larger-city dealers did, by observation. Many GM owners would give their dealers "a pass" for not being able to fix their car, or the OEM for not putting it together better, but not for Chrysler products, as I observed when I went to work in the Chevrolet parts department in a moderately-size dealer on the fringe of DFW. Some customers came back several times for the same drivability complaint. We did what we could to take care of it, which they understood, and they kept buying cars from us. Plus, our guys knew how to order the vehicles for best value and best service life, which MANY Chevy dealers did not know how to do, by observation. Which is a key thing for any brand of dealer! Dealers tend to be paranoid about "not having what the customer wants", but sometimes those things also end up in the service department with "issues", some of which can be "user problems".
I applaud
@saforwardlook for going the extra miles to get Chrysler's drivability issues fixed, back then! Getting things fixed/improved that should have been done long before the vehicles were ever approved for production. And doing things Chrysler Engineering should have done to start with.
Sorry for the length,
CBODY67
