Chrysler has a history of staging wild news events at the NAIAS. This year the automaker will be a no-show during press days.
Chrysler Group LLC has confirmed that it won’t host a press conference at the 2010 North American International Auto Show
Chrysler Group traditionally has used the annual Detroit Auto Show for some eye-catching – and expensive stunts – such as dropping a new Ram pickup from the Cobo Hall ceiling, smashing Jeeps through the conference center’s plate glass windows, staging a skit with leaping minivans and even, two years ago, staging a fake cattle drive, complete with cowboys, up busy Washington Boulevard, outside the exhibit hall.
Even in early 2009 when the company was living on federal aid, the company managed to display an array of high-tech concept cars driven by batteries instead of internal combustion engine.
For the first time ever, Chrysler does not plan to hold any kind of press event at the upcoming Detroit Show, spokesman Rick Deneau said.
“We are not going to have a press conference,” Deneau confirmed. “We wanted to be respectful of everyone’s time. Mr. Marchionne is a very practical guy. We didn’t have anything to show,” he said, referring to Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler’s new chief executive officer.
Chrysler also has closed the Firehouse, the show-only tavern it had set up outside Detroit’s Cobo Hall, each January, to entertain journalists from all over the world.
Chrysler also is reconsidering how it uses major auto shows for revealing new vehicles and concepts, Deneau said. “We’d like to do things closer to the on sale date of the vehicles and most of our new stuff isn’t coming until the second half of the year,” he said.
Chrysler isn’t just targeting the Detroit show. It also skipped hosting a press conference at the big auto show in Los Angeles, early this month, and hasn’t decided yet whether it will host a press event at the New York Auto Show, at the beginning of April.
The company, however, won’t be entirely invisible. It will display an array of current vehicles on the floor of Cobo Hall for consumers to view, as it did at the Los Angeles Show. And Marchionne will meet with some reporters.
But officials have denied reports that Chrysler’s Italian partner, Fiat, will hold a news conference of it own for its Lancia brand.
Last week, Marchionne said it will probably take up to two years to determine whether the company’s elaborate turnaround plan is actually working.