Talking about Chrysler corporation ..

Things they did, brought out you liked and our did not

To start with, I would say the word HEMI would top the list for right !

I have always been disappointed in most of the factory wheels

Lean Burn - ICK
Max Wedge - one of the most beautiful engines ever created.

Chrysler engineering did a lot of smart stuff such as even and odd part numbers for right and left side of the car but they made a few dumb moves such as the LH lug nuts and asymmetrical pulley bolt pattern and stuff like that. I also think they screwed up the B engine by using a smaller main bearing size. Had they used the same main bearings in both the B and RB engines it would've created a lot more engine combinations. A factory cross bolted, low deck 426 with MW heads and a good dual plane intake manifold would've put the hurt on a lot of Chevy engines back in the day. They knew how to build an engine like that but they were just a little too clumsy to make it happen.

I think the 5 on 4 bolt pattern was a mistake, they should've just used the same brakes and wheels on the A body cars as the B and E body cars. They eventually figured it out but it was kind of late. Same with the smaller disc brakes, just put the 11.75 rotors on everything with a 15 inch wheel. It fits and is a better solution and parts costs go down since everything uses the same part. They messed up a bunch of that commonality stuff early on, they just didn't really understand how to cut costs. They also screwed up by getting rid of the big block tooling in the 70's. Had they kept that tooling they could've been producing blocks all along to sell into the aftermarket. Chevy kept a pipeline going to the racers which really helped them add market share.

I think that using the 'on the shelf' Poly 318 crankshafts in the 273 was a big mistake. The fix for the lighter 273 piston was to add a massive wristpin to weight the piston to the Poly 318's weight. Using a stock 10.25:1 273 piston with a light weight pin you can take about 4 pounds out of the crank.

The spin off of the 1981 Dodge Charger and the Plymouth Turismo from the 1979 Omni/Horizon was one of the better ideas of the late 1970's. The 2.2 should have been dual over head cam from the get go. If they had put the 318 in the Shelby Charger like Carrol wanted it would have been a 5.0L Mustang killer.

Bellhousing bolt patterns.... Why? Make just 1 for the 904, 727 and all stickshifts. From the /6 to the V10. Same with torqueconverters, make them all neutral balanced and do the balance with the flexplates.

Mine are very broad:

Bringing the F body Aspen/Volare to market too early.

On the 3.6 Pentastar, not quickly correcting the weak point in the cylinder head/lifter tap (mostly left bank) let alone allowing to occur in the first place. An otherwise great engine developed a bad reputation for years by allowing this to continue for at LEAST four production years, and probably five. Same goes for the LX platform tension struts. Tried a slight change in geometry in '11 but early failures continued. Police cars FINALLY got solid bushing instead of hydrobushing in late '14. I don't know about civi cars. Again, an otherwise great platform develops bad reputation and many departments drop the line. Dumb, dumb dumb.

Dropping the Pentastar. DUMB marketing move. DUMB DUMB DUMB. Makes absolutely no sense. It's a beautiful symbol, immediately recognizable, and not something lame like a bow tie. Again, made no sense.

Hard to come up with things prior to these; a stand alone company with a reputation for excellence in engineering. Incredibly broad range of product. Virgil Exner's automotive designs. Powertrains that wouldn't quit.

Edit: I forgot the good!

Agreed, number one, the Hemi!

Number two, probably the slanty. Have to say the old workhorse slant six probably deserves number two at least!

Number three, torqueflite transmissions. The 727 mainly.

From the muscle car era the styling, colors, stripes, are better than the other guys in most cases.

Mopar cars seem to be more thrown together than the other guys. Sloppy fit and finish, doors are noisy when the close. etc.

Over assisted power steering with poor road feel. Nice in a tight parking lot if you have flabby arms though.

Dropping rwd cars for so many years was a bad idea.

They seem to have better brakes than their competitors offered.

Adjustable torsion bar suspension is great for getting the right stance all by yourself.

Not doing more to keep Plymouth around was a bad move.

The 5x4.5 bolt pattern on 4wd trucks and using the weird 44fbj front wheel bearing setup instead of normal 44. I still don't get the big hard on for the full time 4wd back then, it wasn't much use in 4 hi anyway.
One of life's great mysteries for me has been why the difference between small block and big block bellhousings? Converter or flywheel size? Yet GM could do it...
Dana 60's every, I liked that... I also like how serviceable they made the big block, external oil pump, dry intake manifold and a 4 bolt water pump.
The dual block heaters was a nice option in Canada, but then in the 70's trucks, they made the fuse and wiring too small for the draw of the heater motor, ending in a melted fuse block.
A 4 door car and fwd car called the charger... never liked it.

In the eyes of the general consumer, I'd nominate:
The early rust-out & QC of the '57 cars, which were otherwise pretty amazing at the time. That hurt them for many years.
Generally cheaper interior appearance than the competition.
Sometimes too-cheap materials, like interior vinyls.

Chrysler Corp was justly regarded as an engineering-heavy manufacturer, but I'd bet there was competition among the engineers for cleverness.
Some of the items already mentioned are valid, but try a '60s Ford product for weird ideas & non-interchangeable items: just nuts !

Later on, the crap MP stuff, and their lack of support for their iconic older cars (vs, say, Chevrolet) has marginalized them.

Nevertheless, there's so much great stuff they did, I'd use a few paragraphs to list it all.

Some dont realize that 99% of the calls came from the top.. I worked in a few labs at Chrysler
for 35 year.. one lab we came up with electronic ignition and the transverse torsion bars and
a few others but each time they would try to cut money out of each project or dropped some
good ones and some should have been the transverse bar should have but they wanted to stay
with what Chrysler was known for.. a coil over would have been far better which they did go
to later.. to them it was always about the stock holder

I'll agree that the small bolt pattern in A body cars is a bad idea but Ford used 4 lug hubs.

We did do for the small cars till we found they were cracking wheels.. the small the pattern started out for
the slant 6 but then they got the idea for a V-8 in it

Two things I hated what they did was the left handed lugs on the left side and all the bell housings
but the lug thing was logical but we never had a problem

Right=they built a good product
Wrong= alot of the types the brand attracts

Yeah having a bunch of different bolt patterns for bellhousing wasn't a good idea. Chevy was much smarter about that kind of stuff.

+ Deep skirt big blocks for strength and ease of oil pan removal in cars

- Having to remove the heater hose to remove/install the water pump housing, especially when its an old vintage housing

I have wondered strictly from a common sense standpoint, why so many differences?
Bolt patterns for wheels.
Bell housing patterns.

Why did they built post hardtops and pillarless coupes of the same car? (Dart/Valiant, Belvedere/Coronet) What sense did it make to build 2 sets of doors, roof structures, different windshields, back glass, etc ? I know that other manufacturers did this but I've yet to meet someone that could explain it well as to why it was done.

While I won't argue the bellhousing thing is annoying (especially now wanting to put OD behind a big block) but Mopars always had a vast interchangeability across the board
A lot of the mechanical bits don't care if its on an A-body or a D100, its all the same. Aside from stuff blowing up, that was one of the big things that turned me off of Fords, they have so many different designations for one engine size (for example) and NONE of it interchanges even though its the same CI. Chrysler was always on the verge of bankruptcy, so they had to save money somewhere, and the mechanical bits were it.

That being said though, I also think that's what held them back too. If you bought a Pontiac Grand Prix in the '70's, it had a different dash from the same year Monte. With Chrysler, the dash was pretty much the same all the way across the different models. Why would you pony up extra money for 'class' (Cordoba) when grandmas Fury has the same dash?

I know what I'm trying to say but I'm tired so I hope this made some sense.

While you guys are covering the bellwethers (esp. HEMI). I think the 727 and it's variants are up there, of course the XJ Cherokee and Minivans, for naught the co would be dead. I think very up there is the mating of the Cummins to Dodge was brilliant.
The only thing I've felt cheesy, yet understand on the design level was the unibody/torsion bar concept. Primer dips should have included the entire body to the top of roof.
The wrongest was the omni or tc, I'm not fond of either.

Another thing I liked, is the one key for the door and the ignition, Gm's drove me nuts for that, always 2 keys.

I always hated fusible links...

Dodge tailgates sucked until 1994..

Early 80's Chrysler imperial with 318 fuel injection, nice car with an engine that never ran right, and that no dealer could ever fix.

I remember a old time repair shop owner who saying in the mid 1970s if you had Fischer design the body and Ford make that body and put it on a chassis designed and made by Chrysler you would only need one car in your lifetime