Under the Pentastar: News highlights from a busy week

Posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 2:09 PM EDT.

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Russia fancies Jeep and Dodge; Charger to police the Middle East; and Mopar’s Grand Prix presence. These are among the most significant stories this week Under the Pentastar.

Chrysler continues to make inroads in international markets, as demonstrated by its presence at the 2008 Moscow International Motor Show. The Company introduced two new vehicles to the media and the public—the Jeep Cherokee (Liberty in the United States) and all-new Dodge Journey, the first crossover in the Company’s Dodge model range.

Russia has quickly grown to become one of Chrysler’s top 10 markets in volume sales. A delegation of Kuwaiti officials was in Warren, Michigan, to meet with Chrysler officials and to conduct final inspection of the upfitting of 150 Dodge Charger police vehicles purchased by the Government of Kuwait. Trent Barcroft, Managing Director for Chrysler Middle East Regional Office, says selection of the 2009 Dodge Chargers as the Kuwaiti government’s choice for a police vehicle was consistent with Charger’s standing as the number one volume vehicle for Chrysler LLC in the Middle East.

TRENT BARCROFT
We have increased our sales in the last two years by 127%, and obviously this type of business is new to us, but it will help catapult us hopefully another 127% over the next couple of years.

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Chrysler plans to explore strategic options for its Dodge Viper business. This review comes as the Company focuses on enhancing its core business and leveraging its assets. This review, which is unique to the Viper specialty vehicle, comes as the Company strengthens the Dodge brand’s core portfolio with four all-new Dodge-branded offerings introduced for 2009 — Dodge Journey, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Durango Hybrid and Dodge Ram – and prepares to bring even more exciting vehicles to its customers in the near future.

Team Mopar’s Cindi Lux will compete in Sunday’s SPEED World Challenge GT at The Raceway at Belle Isle Park, Mich., as world-class auto racing returns to the Motor City on Labor Day weekend 2008. The Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix will feature the American Le Mans Series, the IndyCar Series and, new for ‘08, the SCCA SPEED World Challenge GT Championship, of which Lux competes. Lux says she says she confident of putting on a good show, even though she has not yet seen the track.

CINDI LUX
No, we’ve never raced it. This is the first time that the series is actually here for the Belle Isle race, so a lot of us from a set-up standpoint and a driving standpoint were behind the 8-ball, but the bottom line is it really doesn’t matter, because the point is no one has had the experience and no one has any insight, so as long as we all have the same amount of track time, the same everything, it should be fine.Narrator

Cindi and her No. 2 Team Mopar Dodge Viper Competition Coupe will compete on the 2.35 mile, 14-turn street course on the island, which is just a short bridge crossing from Detroit.

These are a few of the significant stories this week Under The Pentastar. I’m Pete Misiak.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 2:09 PM EDT and is filed under Company and tagged Video. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.