Courtesy of DaimlerChrysler
Nice Ride: The Challenger concept car
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Where LaSorda ultimately wants to steer Chrysler, though, is out of the Big Three. He'd rather move with the fast crowd: Honda, Nissan and Toyota. "They're the force to be reckoned with," he says. For now, Chrysler is not in their league, making just $500 per car while Toyota banks $2,000 on each model it sells. "Chrysler is on the edge of a cliff," says analyst Sean McAlinden. "They can look down on the rocks and see GM and Ford and look up on the mountain and see Toyota." To climb that mountain, LaSorda intends to boost Chrysler's sales by 1 million cars by 2010.

Phase 1: next year's new-model onslaught, which will see Jeep double its offerings and Dodge return fire on the Mustang with its own retro-cool Challenger muscle car.

LaSorda runs his product-development machine as lean as his factories: Chrysler now spits out 50 percent more new models on a budget that's been cut from $8.5 billion to $6 billion since 2000. "More with less," he says, smiling. "That's the secret of our success."