Chrysler Ponders Partners for Pickup, Roadster

Chrysler LLC is Exploring Corporate alliances as a means of bringing two concept vehicles — a small pickup and roadster — into production, the auto maker's new design chief says.

The approach is in keeping with a strategy to better manage the auto maker's product-development resources, says Ralph Gilles, who succeeds the retiring Trevor Creed as senior vice president-design.

“Our biggest challenge is we're trying to not oversubscribe ourselves,” Gilles tells Ward's. “We're trying to do less product, very well.”

The Jeep JT, a pickup based on the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited SUV, and the Dodge Demon roadster both bowed in early 2007, just as Chrysler found itself faced with an ownership change that severed its access to the considerable investment and intellectual capital of what is now Daimler AG.

“They're concepts, but we're shopping them around looking for, maybe, partnerships,” Gilles says.

Of the two, the JT presents “an easier proposition,” he says, adding it has captured the imaginations of Chrysler personnel.

Chrysler took considerable heat in 2006 when Ward's revealed the auto maker had decided against building a similar concept, the Gladiator, which shared a platform with the auto maker's Dodge Dakota compact pickup.

But Gilles says the auto maker has received “a lot of love mail” about the JT, a product of his Mopar Underground team of Chrysler employees who create niche concepts for SEMA and other specialty shows.

The Demon, a Creed favorite, was conceived as an affordable Mazda Miata-fighter.

Meanwhile, Gilles dismisses the assertion from two Ward's sources that Chrysler has production teams that are virtually idle because the auto maker's pipeline is dry.

“That's not true,” he says.