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162 
INER, DODGEM KARRIER
Page 71
Page 72
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operators' supplement
This is Chrysler UK
Asked where Chrysler United Kingdom Ltd sees its place in the commercial vehicle market, sales and marketing director Geoffrey Ellison answers unhesitatingly: "We believe that truck quality and technical excellence are a better marketing platform than price. Our products have a reputation based on quality—it has never been our policy to build down to a price".
And yet with the price tag that goes with their reputation for reliability and longevity, Commer, Dodge and Karrier vehicles are not turned out in penny numbers. It may come as a surprise to learn that last year's total output was 32,025—of which 10,747 were exported.
The extended and modernized truck plant at Dunstable—literally across the road from international rivals Vauxhall Motors—is what makes such numbers possible. In fact, given untroubled economic conditions the plant is capable of turning out around 50,000 trucks and vans a year.
Chrysler regards Dunstable as significant in another way—as an integrated truck operation where manufacture, sales, the special equipment section and costing are all under one roof. With the truck field becoming more and more specialized this is an important factor, for example in being able to give a fleet operator comprehensive on-thespot attention.
The Dunstable factory is the main element in Chrysler United Kingdom's truck manufacturing group—which also includes facilities at Luton, Maidstone and Canterbury. Dunstable is primarily an assembly plant, undertaking no machining. Three main assembly lines are operated, one for light vehicles from the 1-ton Commer van upwards, one for "mediums" from the 2-ton WalkThru upwards and the third for the heavies starting at the 7-ton-gvw Commer. The latter line includes the Dodge range and also the Fargo export versions of the Dodge 500 series.
The light line just now is running double-shifted, thanks partly to export orders for Commer vans, and is assembling 60 a day. The medium track and heavy track together are producing nearly 50 vehicles a day; like most manufacturers Chrysler has been hit by the economic recession's effect on truck demand.
In charge of truck manufacturing is Des Thompson, an enthusiast who would dearly like to see an upturn in the economy so that he could consider double-shifting his medium and heavy tracks— which could readily turn out a total of 150 commercials a day. If it is frustrating to be in charge of a well-equipped modern plant that has never been run at capacity since it was completed, he manages to conceal the disappointment philosophically.
A stone's throw from Dunstable is Chrysler's Luton works which machines gearboxes, axles and other items in the vehicle power train and also builds the Walk-Thru boxvan body. Located too at Luton is the small force of design engineers who deal with day-to-day engineering problems and work on the special equipment operation projects, which are dealt with more fully later in this supplement.
The other main sections of Chrysler's truck manufacture in Britain are in Kent (the Kew factory having long since been vacated), at Maidstone and Canterbury. From these Kent plants come the twostroke three-cylinder diesel (from the old Tilling Stevens works—hence TS3) and the four-cylinder petrol engine, the axles, front suspensions and trim for the light vans, together with many machined and fabricated components. Rootes (Maidstone)—one of the few surviving examples of the old company name—also builds ambulances and other special bodies.
Two other Chrysler facilities in Britain are vital to the truck operation. In Birmingham the old Singer factory has been transformed into a vast commercial vehicle and car spares centre with computerized high-speed parts supply, while at Coventry is the hub of the design and engineering activity— not just for Chrysler United Kingdom but for all Chrysler operations in Europe. The design and research for Chrysler Espana (Barreiros), the Corporation's only other European truck manufacturing plant, is undertaken at this 550,000 sq. ft. Whitley technical centre at Coventry, as well as the design and development of cars for home factories and for Chrysler's Simca subsidiary in France. The fitm centre at Whitley is the Corporation's biggest planning, research and design facility and among its sections is a big new emissions laboratory concerned with exhaust fumes. Safety and vehicle noise are two other topical activities.
It is here at Whitley that, even now, new generations of Commer, Dodge and Karrier vehicles are being designed and developed.
As befits an internationally owned company, whose major shareholder is itself a world-wide Corporation, Chrysler United Kingdom Ltd has an international board of directors. Chairman is Lord Rootes (whose family interests figure largely in the 17 per cent of the shares which are not Chrysler owned). He and Gilbert Hunt, the managing director and chief executive, are the two board members who have day-to-day involvement in the running of the company. Four other Britons are on the board, while four board members hail from the parent Corporation in the USA and Europe.
The actual executive management of the group is in the hands of a 15-man administrative committee, each man (other than chief executive Gilbert Hunt and deputy managing director Don Lander) having charge of one of the divisions into which the company is arranged. These include manufacturing, sales and marketing, finance, public relations and so on, but significantly there is a division for quality, safety and reliability at this level too.
Speculators sometimes conjure with the prospect of one or all of the US-owned motor manufacturers in Britain folding their tents, in the face of labour troubles, and setting them up on the other side of the Channel. Such speculations generally ignore the sheer tie-up in capital plant, quite apart from skilled labour, which the British facilities represent. In the case of Chrysler United Kingdom Ltd (still swallowing hard on a £10.8m loss in 1969-70 but now operating profitably) the additional investment over the past four years has been well over £60m.
This, then, is Chrysler UK. On the pages that follow CM examines the products, the services and some of the operator experiences associated with the marques Commer. Dodge and Karrier.