Keeping the Crisis in Chrysler

Some other carmakers were trying to address the problem, but their solutions were often clunky and hard to figure out. Chrysler's design let drivers transform a minivan with seating for eight to one that could carry two passengers up front and a full-size motorcycle in the back in less than a minute. By April 2005, Chrysler's minivan sales were booming, up more than 20% for brands such as Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country.

But that wasn't the end of the consumer-focus lesson. Zetsche and his team took the idea and applied it to another big issue: expanding the Jeep brand from just three nameplates -- Wrangler, Liberty, and Grand Cherokee -- to a mainstream brand with five all-new nameplates expected to be launched by 2007. To make such an expansion work would require listening intently to what consumers wanted from a Jeep, not what competitors were doing.

With Jeep, of course, Chrysler had gotten a jump on sport utilities, one of the biggest trends in the auto industry. But once again, rivals had leapfrogged Chrysler with more creature comforts, and Jeep needed to catch up. Still, Zetsche and his team guarded against making the mistakes of the 2000 minivan team -- adding cost and features drivers wouldn't pay for. Instead, they demanded that Jeep stay true to consumers, instead of simply following competitors.

For the people working on the new Jeeps, that meant grounding themselves in what Jeep stood for -- and especially in what it didn't. The team pondered that as it began work on the Commander, the first new nameplate that would not only compete against full-size SUVs like the Ford Explorer but also giant sport-utes such as the Cadillac Escalade. Should Chrysler hop on the trend of "low profile" tires and big flashy rims? After all, those big tires had helped give the Caddy cachet among young drivers.

The answer from the Jeep team: No way. A Jeep with big rims would make it unusable off-road, says Jeff Bell, vice president in charge of the Jeep and Chrysler brands, and that was unacceptable to consumers, even if they never drove the Jeep on anything rougher than a supermarket parking lot. "It could never be 'trail-rated'," Bell says. To be listed as trail-rated by Chrysler, a Jeep has to be able to meet 37 different requirements as set down by the Nevada Automotive Test Center. That means things such as the ability to ford streams and having traction on steep grades.

Such requirements could be considered a straightjacket for a team charged with expanding the Jeep brand. But by creating rules prescribed by consumer wants, Bell says, the team wouldn't make minivan-style mistakes. That didn't mean the Jeep team wouldn't incorporate competitors' ideas that consumers said they wanted in a Jeep -- such as a third row of seats, a popular option on big sport-utilities. Engineering the Commander for a third row did stretch the team's creativity. To be trail-rated, the Commander could be only a couple of inches longer and virtually no higher than a Grand Cherokee with a luggage rack. Go much past those Grand Cherokee dimensions and the Commander wouldn't make it through tight canyons or turn around on hairpin mountain roads.

To balance the two competing consumer needs -- third rows and trail ratings -- the team decided to raise the roof of the Commander just a few inches. While it's still a tight squeeze in the third row, raising the roof gives passengers more headroom, so the back of the Commander feels spacious. From the outside, it's hard to see the change because a cargo rack hides the higher roofline. But it is clear evidence of something else: a big change at a company long know for its shoot-from-the-hip approach. Chrysler, Bell says, is finally learning that "creativity actually occurs when the boundaries are defined, not when they are limitless." nFC

Fara Warner (www.farawarner.com) is a Fast Company contributing writer and author of The Power of the Purse: How Smart Businesses Are Adapting to the World's Most Important Consumers (Prentice Hall, 2005).