Эксперимент Chrysler и Mitsubishi заложил основу современных автомобильных союзов

How Chrysler and Mitsubishi Accidentally Predicted the Future of Cars The Diamond-Star Motors experiment laid the groundwork for today’s pervasive automotive industry tie-ups. Cooperation between global automakers has become standard practice, a modern method for sharing the immense cost burden of developing new vehicle platforms. Doing so spreads the investment and allows brands that ostensibly don’t go head to head in every market to reap the benefits when a fresh model goes on sale. In the early days of international cooperation, American car companies were less likely to go all in on shared designs with international partners, instead importing autos assembled elsewhere and rebadging them for the U.S. market. This strategy held firm for decades, and while some technological cross-pollination did occur, there were still clear silos separating “built here” and “built over there,” regardless of how the marketing copy might read. In the 1980s, Chrysler took an unusual step alongside its longtime collaborator Mitsubishi that pushed past this status quo. Having long invested in the Japanese brand and featuring a fleet of “captive import” rebadged vehicles developed by Mitsubishi, the brain trust in Auburn Hills chose to go all in on building cars together in America. This was no marriage of convenience, no forced merger of equals (as would later haunt Chrysler’s corporate story). Instead, it was a conscious choice to test the kind of synergy that would drive the foundation of so many of today’s boardroom tie-ups. So begins the story of Diamond-Star Motors, a match that helped write the opening chapter of how today’s automotive industry operates. Corralling the Captive Imports Captive imports were a brisk business for Chrysler after it emerged from bankruptcy in the early 1980s. The trickle of small hatchbacks and coupes borrowed from Mitsubishi soon became a torrent as Americans sought out fuel-efficient commuters from a familiar face. Not many of these buyers knew the Dodges and Plymouths they were buying in that era were being built overseas, and with more than 100,000 sales per year of these thrifty fuel sippers, Chrysler was making good money that crosstown rivals like Ford and General Motors weren’t matching with import programs of their own. There was a storm cloud on the horizon for Chrysler-Mitsubishi machinery, though. During the same period, companies like Honda and Toyota were doubling their efforts at cracking the U.S. market, with Datsun (soon to be Nissan) hot on their heels. With a level of top-down management not seen in the American economy, the Japanese giants eventually agreed to keep their individual exports below a certain level each year so as to maintain a healthy spirit of competition, one of the many voluntary brakes applied by the industry on its various outputs over the years as Japan blueprinted itself into the industrial powerhouse it eventually became. Why was this a problem for Chrysler, specifically? As mentioned above, neither FoMoCo nor GM were leaning all that heavily on Japanese partnerships to fill their dealer lots, which meant any kind of export quota was unlikely to significantly impact their bottom lines. The Pentastar, on the other hand, didn’t just have to contend with limits on how many cars it could ship over from Mitsubishi’s Japanese operations, but it also had to contend with Mitsubishi’s own sales operations in the United States. Under the eyes of its Japanese rivals, those weren’t separate items when tabulating the quota, and suddenly Chrysler’s plans for expanding its compact car family were in trouble.