A Brand New 2020 Chrysler 300 Apparently Left The Factory With Mismatched Trims And Headlamps | Carscoops
A black eye for Chrysler quality control, as evidenced by this 300 being sold in Florida
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Good deal on a Chrysler 300?
- Thread starter Baggsy
- Start date
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Friday afternoon car.
That car passed at least 3 inspector stations during assembly since that trim didn't go on, and skipped through final inspection.
I've seen ltd/mercury, escort /lynx, tempo / topaz with each others parts "leave the building". No one really cares inside.
All cars are somewhere on the line on a friday afternoon (and tuesday morning, and thursday night, etc).
I've seen ltd/mercury, escort /lynx, tempo / topaz with each others parts "leave the building". No one really cares inside.
All cars are somewhere on the line on a friday afternoon (and tuesday morning, and thursday night, etc).
There was a magical post on Reddit a couple years ago (haven't been able to find it) where a new Charger delivered to the dealer was putting out an unbelievable amount of smoke. Upon further inspection they discovered it was missing a piston. I know that sounds like BS but it came with convincing pictures and video
Couple of stories.....
Co-worker bought one of the first hemi chargers (the new ones), the panel gaps were so bad it looked like it had been in a major accident. He went back to the dealer to complain, they literally told him "What do you expect, its a Chrysler".
I worked in a Japanese auto plant, one of the employees ordered a truck and followed it down the line changing all the trim codes on the build sheets to get "free upgrades". He would have got away with it except the line stopped because it had a euro engine but NA exhaust, nothing lined up.... It ended up as an on-site only maintenance vehicle with a cherry bomb on it for exhaust.
Co-worker bought one of the first hemi chargers (the new ones), the panel gaps were so bad it looked like it had been in a major accident. He went back to the dealer to complain, they literally told him "What do you expect, its a Chrysler".
I worked in a Japanese auto plant, one of the employees ordered a truck and followed it down the line changing all the trim codes on the build sheets to get "free upgrades". He would have got away with it except the line stopped because it had a euro engine but NA exhaust, nothing lined up.... It ended up as an on-site only maintenance vehicle with a cherry bomb on it for exhaust.
Until you've worked on the inside of an assembly plant, it's impossible to "get it".
One particular day when the power out, (emerg lighting comes on) I watched a guy down the line. He screwed "**** FORD" in 2 foot letters on the side of an Econoline van with self tapping screws. Van was white. Nice touch.
There's so much sabotage inside, it's ridiculous. All it's takes is 1 disgruntled line worker to turn things upside down.
Never did an employee order a car with options. Dead nuts bare bones.
When the vin gets rivited on, the employees' order gets a tag "EMPLOYEE UNIT" placed on the roof.
It's known by all to make it fully loaded just in case he/she can't walk the line with it.
At the end of the line, every vehicle gets weighed, in front of security. Most of them "cleared".
And theft back in the day!
I watched 2 guys carry a windshild out, past security. The windshield was between the newspaper they pretended to be reading. They made it.
One particular day when the power out, (emerg lighting comes on) I watched a guy down the line. He screwed "**** FORD" in 2 foot letters on the side of an Econoline van with self tapping screws. Van was white. Nice touch.
There's so much sabotage inside, it's ridiculous. All it's takes is 1 disgruntled line worker to turn things upside down.
Never did an employee order a car with options. Dead nuts bare bones.
When the vin gets rivited on, the employees' order gets a tag "EMPLOYEE UNIT" placed on the roof.
It's known by all to make it fully loaded just in case he/she can't walk the line with it.
At the end of the line, every vehicle gets weighed, in front of security. Most of them "cleared".
And theft back in the day!
I watched 2 guys carry a windshild out, past security. The windshield was between the newspaper they pretended to be reading. They made it.
a guy I knew worked at Ford Oakville and he ordered a car.
When they build an employee car, the car gets a special build sheet, so that everyone knows it's an employee car.
He gets the car, all is good... for about a week... it smells.
Off to the dealership. They find nothing.
It gets worse, back to the dealership... nothing.
We eventually start taking the car apart... someone on the line left their lunch bag in the bottom of the passenger door. THANK YOU
When they build an employee car, the car gets a special build sheet, so that everyone knows it's an employee car.
He gets the car, all is good... for about a week... it smells.
Off to the dealership. They find nothing.
It gets worse, back to the dealership... nothing.
We eventually start taking the car apart... someone on the line left their lunch bag in the bottom of the passenger door. THANK YOU
Whoever put the (upgraded) trim panel on that door needs a good kick in the nuts. It's his/her job to remove anything in the door that's not supposed to be there.
There's no special build sheet, trust me.
Cardboard tag, taped to the roof, so everyone sees it.
I find it hard to believe that manual build-sheet tampering would have worked at any time in the last 20 years. The build configuration is electronic, and everything on it gets distributed to the suppliers who get a build sequence of parts to supply, and those end up at the line just-in-time. The chap on the line just puts on whatever part is put in front of them - he doesn't get to pick and choose. The customers that supply interior components have the worst of this, because the build sequence could want (let's say) a grey headliner no sunroof, followed by another grey headliner with sunroof, followed by a black one for panoramic glass roof, followed by a beige one with sunroof, etc etc. They handle this by having racks of each configuration stored in an ASRS (automatic storage and retrieval system), and a robotic picker picks them out in the build sequence and puts them in a shipping rack in the right order. There's no way for anyone at that point in the process to know which vehicle is destined for an employee ... As an aside, I know someone who worked at a plant that supplied steering wheels to Ford Oakville. Multiply the possible combinations of colour, which model of car it's for, which trim level it has (the steering wheel buttons are different), and it ended up at several hundred possible steering wheel variations!
Monkeying around to some extent certainly isn't impossible ... someone on the line may have access to the parts for the next few cars in sequence, which might open up the possibility of swapping which part goes on this car with what was supposed to go on the next one, thus resulting in two messed-up units ...
Monkeying around to some extent certainly isn't impossible ... someone on the line may have access to the parts for the next few cars in sequence, which might open up the possibility of swapping which part goes on this car with what was supposed to go on the next one, thus resulting in two messed-up units ...
I think a lot of the stories are old wives tales. Or from long, long ago. Back in the 80's and 90's, yeah, a car going down the line could have the cheap basic radio swapped out for the "upgraded" radio (which at the time was basically a few extra dials and maybe some EQ sliders) and it would work just fine. Lots of stuff was easily swappable and it just worked. Today, changing out a factory head unit from basic to delux nav/infotainment or whatever (to use but one example) requires a complete change in the ECM/BCM programming so the car recognizes, mates, and interfaces with that new radio. This isn't stuff that a random guy on the line can change - it's built into the process from the very start when the mated BCM is installed in the car and flashed. Yeah, the guy on the line might be able to "oops" put in the wrong radio, but it wouldn't work. And then the next guy on the line who has to install a dash trim panel or something would find the one designated and delivered from that vehicle doesn't fit because it's the wrong radio size/design. And then it spirals downward from there with parts shortages vs overages because of such, etc. The automotive construction lines now are all JIT (Just In Time) and there's not just hundreds of boxes of accessories for people on the line to randomly pick from - racks and bins arrive with carefully inventoried and matched units that each are designated for each build coming down the line.
Lots of guys in the EV world are now experimenting with the first gen Volts as they're all expiring from warranty and are getting into the high mile territory. Even installing a backup camera requires flashing modules to get the car to recognize it - it just doesn't work otherwise even if all the wiring and such is plugged in. Same with adding a nav feature to a car which never had it, or adaptive cruise control, etc etc. It's not just a matter of plugging in the hardware and it magically works.
Back in the 90's and before however, yeah, I don't doubt there was all sorts of theft and abuse - it was easy back then. I spent enough time around GM Oshawa back then at work to know that a lot of things like upgraded radios and such walked out of the place many times in backpacks during shift change etc.
Lots of guys in the EV world are now experimenting with the first gen Volts as they're all expiring from warranty and are getting into the high mile territory. Even installing a backup camera requires flashing modules to get the car to recognize it - it just doesn't work otherwise even if all the wiring and such is plugged in. Same with adding a nav feature to a car which never had it, or adaptive cruise control, etc etc. It's not just a matter of plugging in the hardware and it magically works.
Back in the 90's and before however, yeah, I don't doubt there was all sorts of theft and abuse - it was easy back then. I spent enough time around GM Oshawa back then at work to know that a lot of things like upgraded radios and such walked out of the place many times in backpacks during shift change etc.
A friend's dad had a Ford dealership and a car they sold had a rattle they couldn't find. A couple of years later the car was in a wreck and they bought it for spares. When they were taking it apart they found a screwdriver bit taped somewhere under the dash along with a note "Bet this drove you crazy"
I really don't get why manufacturers build cars this way... maybe Brian knows. To me, it would make way more sense that a car's software package would be plug and play with most possible option combinations, at least for a given model year. It would greatly simplify things at the manufacturing end (body control modules would be practically universal, just pull one off the stack) and at the service end (don't need a super complex programming tool that techs have to be trained to configure for every possible option combination, there's only 1-3 possible software packages to flash)
It does seem from the outside that auto manufacturers are determined to re-learn on their own every single lesson that the software industry learned a decade in the past (which is one of the things that makes me so wary of digital dashboards, but so far they have seem to done ok)
Like my father has a 2009 Silverado, which had an option for a factory trailer brake controller that he didn't get when he bought it new but decided later that he would want it. It is absolutely impossible to retrofit it.... why?! All the connections are there, but if the truck wasn't programmed from the factory to work with it, then no beans
I found the thread, however it looks like Chrysler's legal department noticed it at some point as the evidence is gone.
If it makes you feel any better, the car in question looked a lot like this
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'74-76 Torino (For you youngin's, Google Starsky and Hutch... it was a thing), and YES they used coloured build sheets.
This is from back in the day that if you wanted a Ford pickup in any body style other than a standard two door, the body was built in a small industrial unit on Royal Windsor Dr. by four old guys with thick italian accents.
So many systems are interconnected now, that's why. That, and money savings - a car that never had adaptive cruise control from the factory (for one option) would have a lot of features activated in control screens that just wouldn't do anything if the option (and related hardware) wasn't actually installed, so people would innundate support lines saying "I see this adaptive cruise control button on my steering wheel and all the options in the cars menus, why doesn't it work??!".
Your trailer brake controller scenario? Same thing - the relevant displays and settings pages are often built into the cars software to display on the dashboard or infotainment display. No actual hardware? You don't want those displays to even show up. Therefore, different software. Want to add the hardware? You need the relevant software.
Even plugging a new piece of hardware into a computer sometimes needs a "driver" to make it talk to the computer and work. Think along the same lines for cars.
The body control module hardware is generally the same, but at some point on the production line, it gets flashed with the vehicle configuration from that electronic build sheet: does it have a power sunroof, does it have fog lights, which engine, which transmission, which radio, manual or automatic or dual-zone climate control, etc.
And none of this would have been an issue for that Torino. My brother-in-law's Torino rusted out in three years, but I digress.
