The art of failure is one that’s surprisingly tricky to master. If something just subpar enough to not pique people’s interest fails, it’s predictable. If something seemingly designed to fail fails, it’s a great story about corporate culture. However, if something that should’ve been successful on paper, with the right moves, the right perks, and the right style fails, that deserves a closer look. Take the second-generation Chrysler 200, for example. On paper, it had a lot going for it, but it left its mark on automotive history with one of the shortest production runs of any modern mainstream car.
Looking back, when the second-generation Chrysler 200 launched, it actually seemed to be right in the mix thanks to forward-looking styling and a robust set of amenities, and it wasn’t widely panned by road testers either. Considering the end result, it all really makes you wonder what went wrong.
While the 2011 Chrysler 200 was little more than a facelifted Sebring, the 2015 model year saw a total revitalization of the model. Now running on a variant of Fiat’s Compact Wide platform, it gained all-new swoopy sheetmetal, and it certainly wasn’t short on available features. An available 506-watt Alpine audio system went properly loud, a heated steering wheel was uncommon in the midsize sedan segment at the time, ventilated front seats were a nice touch, and an 8.4-inch touchscreen felt like the future a decade ago.
Under the hood, the ubiquitous 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 returned to the options sheet, now sporting a robust 295 horsepower. Enough to outmuscle the V6 versions of the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, not to mention the turbocharged two-liter engine available in the Ford Fusion. Shifts were handled by a new nine-speed automatic transmission, and for those in snowy climates, an available all-wheel-drive system could shift up to 60 percent of the engine’s torque to the rear axle.
That all sounds like a recipe for a reasonably quick car, and despite a whopping curb weight of 3,844 pounds for a V6 AWD 200S, Motor Trend managed zero-to-60 mph in a brisk 6.3 seconds from of an all-wheel-drive V6 test car, and ultimately came away impressed by just how much the second-generation Chrysler 200 outshone its predecessor. As the magazine summarized:
Ultimately, the new 2015 Chrysler 200S is a massive leap in the right direction for Chrysler. After years of less-than-mediocre offerings in the midsize segment, the new 200 finally represents a midsize sedan Chrysler can be proud of. While the new 200S isn’t yet class leading, it’s certainly class competitive, and that’s worlds better than any 200 — or Sebring, for that matter — has ever been.
With receptive press and consumers, things looked good at first. In 2014, Chrysler managed to sell 117,363 examples of the 200 despite the supply interruption of a model changeover, and 2015 gave the car its best-ever sales year with 167,368 units finding homes across America. It all looked good, right up until it didn’t. In 2016, the Chrysler 200 suffered a 66 percent year-over-year decline, shifting 57,294 units over twelve months. In December of that year, Chrysler quit making the second-generation 200 just 33 months after production started, and it would become a specter on Chrysler sales charts into the first quarter of 2024, when the brand inexplicably managed to shift negative one (-1) new examples of a car that had been out of production for more than seven years.
Shortly after the 200 was discontinued, then-FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne told Autoblog, “I can tell you right now that both the Chrysler 200 and the Dodge Dart, as great products as they were, were the least financially rewarding enterprises that we’ve carried out inside FCA in the last eight years,” adding “I don’t know one investment that was as bad as these two were.” Ouch. So what went wrong?
Well, the early troubles of the ZF 9HP automatic transmission likely didn’t help the 200’s chances of success. While the concept of nine forward speeds was novel in the mid-2010s, the ZF 9HP suffered from a difficult gestation period. The 2014 Jeep Cherokee was delayed by several weeks in a last-ditch attempt to fix transmission issues before launch, but since the Chrysler 200 shared the same transmission as the Cherokee, it launched with similar issues in shift logic and transmission build quality. Concerns over transmission quality appeared to be justified in early 2015, when more than 21,000 Chrysler 200s were recalled due to a problem with shifting into park, namely that the gear selector would display park but the transmission wouldn’t actually shift into it. In 2016, these second-generation Chrysler 200s were recalled due to a transmission wiring harness fault that could result in a failsafe shift to neutral, leaving another stain on the nine-speed’s image.
Then there was the fact that the second-generation Chrysler 200 didn’t quite feel fully baked compared to the Mazda 6, Ford Fusion, and even the Honda Accord of the time. I didn’t find the seats in the last one I drove to be hugely comfortable, and while the interior looked great for the time, some of the fit-and-finish wasn’t quite up to par with offerings from Japan. Also, rear seat entry and egress was significantly hampered by the sloping roofline, which is something Marchionne addressed in an interview with Automotive News. He stated “The Hyundai which we copied [presumably the Sonata] has the same problem,” adding the following eyebrow-raising comment:
We didn’t copy the car, we copied the entry point to the rear seat. Dummies. I acknowledge it. Some people from design left some of their private parts on the table after we came up with that determination. But I think we’re learning from this process.
Learning from which process, exactly? Likely the design process, but the image of FCA boardroom circumcisions is a hard one to shake. At the same time, Consumer Reports seemed conflicted on the 200. While an initial road test seemed positive, the publication also wrote the following about Chrysler’s midsizer:
While it represents a vast improvement over the 2011 model, the 200 continues to trail the field by a considerable margin. This is largely owing to klutzy handling, a thrashy base engine and cramped packaging. As much as we want to like the handsomely styled car, and we really do applaud the fact that it is considerably better than its forebears, the Chrysler 200’s competition is just so much better.
Considering that midsize sedans appeal to a fairly traditional demographic, mixed signals from Consumer Reports probably didn’t entice consumers to give Mopar a shot.
I think the biggest issue with the second-generation Chrysler 200 was that it didn’t read the market. If you go back ten years, the crossover SUV craze was absolutely booming, setting a clear trajectory for where the automotive landscape would end up. Between 2011 and 2014, the Ford Explorer, Kia Sorento and Nissan Pathfinder all switched to unibody architectures, Infiniti launched its first three-row crossover which is now responsible for keeping the brand afloat, Mercedes-Benz and BMW gave building crossovers smaller than the GLK and X3 a shot, while midsize sedan selection was largely stagnant.
What did FCA have at the time in the three-row crossover arena at the time? The Dodge Journey and Dodge Durango, definitely, but no three-row Jeeps and no Chrysler-branded successor to the original Pacifica. The money spent developing the Chrysler 200 likely would’ve been better used on a three-row Jeep or a Journey replacement, because that’s where buyers were actually headed.
This shift in consumer preference could be weathered by icons like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, which have decades of great reputation to lean back on. But an all-new sedan from a brand not exactly known for reliability or fuel economy — two things that many sedan-shoppers really look for? That’s tough.
Today, the second-generation Chrysler 200 serves as a reminder that timing is everything. It wasn’t a particularly bad car, but it launched both too soon for its transmission to be sorted and right as the writing ended up on the wall for the midsize sedan segment in America. Since then, the Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Malibu, Mazda 6, and Volkswagen Passat have joined it in the afterlife, with the Subaru Legacy finding its resting place later this year, and the Nissan Altima expected to bid its last goodnight soon. You could easily say that the failure of the Chrysler 200 was an early alarm for the failure of virtually an entire segment. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
(Photo credits: Chrysler)
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The Wife had a 2015 200S. it was decent, and priced pretty well considering some of the options. the 9 speed thankfully did not exhibit some of the issues mentioned thankfully, as it was often parked on an upward grade on the driveway. But I will say the 9 speed was likely the biggest issue. it was not a huge issue, but it still was somewhat annoying. It would get near the point that I would change the oil and sometimes jerk around from reverse to park after rolling out of the driveway. if you let it engage the trans without too much throttle it was not an issue, but put it in gear and go somewhat aggressively and it would stumble, still it got 35MPG regularly, hovering near the 40’s on some of the long covid road trips we took it had lots of space in the trunk and seats were good, radio was fine and basically it was just a decent commuter car. But it was a Chrysler and small, so it was never going to be a huge volume even if it was decent for Chrysler. The Dodge Dart version was the real issue. it was properly positioned with the lesser engines and surprisingly lots of manual transmissions at first. but without a Demon Variant with the V6 and AWD but weighing 3200 lbs or so, it was not able to draw in the crowds needed for the small car to make money based upon volume sales. We actually had the 2.4 in the Chrysler and thankfully it did not drink oil like many were notorious for but the 6 speed auto got a rep for failures as well as the engine stalling, electrical glitches, faulty ignition coils, and seemingly problems with the fuel system, lead to customer concerns over reliability. Chrysler was already pretty sketchy on quality at this time as I recall, so much like the new Hornet, they had a lot of work to do to fight that image and they failed out the gate.
Good car? I rented one, and it was nowhere near good. Competent is the best I’d give it. Bland, totally forgettable, but it got me where I wanted to go.
I had one as a loaner when my Cherokee had warranty work and I thought they looked nice from a distance. Driving one though, transmission would hesitate shifting and the interior just felt sooooooo cheap. The Cherokees interior was great in comparison.
The only thing I ever cared about the 200 was that they had a commercial with Bob freaking Dylan in it!
The times, they were a-changin.’
Tens of millions spent on the campaign and it’s Dylan you remember? Oof, Chrysler did this more badly than I thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYsFUFgOEmM
I was at the launch of the 200. It had nice materials but the transmission was a hot mess and I couldn’t sit in the back seat.
I said everything that came off that platform was 7/8ths what it needed to be. The Cherokee was priced like something larger. The dart was too small compared to the civic. The 200 was too small. It felt like “hey in Europe this is fine so it will be fine for the US.” But it wasn’t. To me, this was a huge fault of Marchionne. He spent enough time in Canada to know what we like here. Super disappointing to see how much they spent revamping Sterling Heights Assembly for a turd of a car.
Similar to the B5 Passat and the old Ford Contour- if you bring a Euro sedan into the US with a Euro-sized back seat, it’s gonna fail.
One of the reasons VW decided to make cars for specific markets.
True, the Contour’s back seat was not good at all. Escorts of the same vintage had more room in the back, and had fewer problems.
But what I never understood is why? Yes there are european designs that had/have horrible rear legroom for sedans (BMW 3 series, Audi A4s, older Passats, the contour mentioned above, etc..)
It’s not like they don’t have tall people in Europe, hell there are ~10 EU countries that have higher average heights vs. America… do Europeans just put up with not being able to move their legs in the back of a smaller sedan? Sure you can argue that they like smaller cars, etc.. but there are cars that are small (lengthwise) that actually do have decent rear legroom. It’s just always confused me.
It’s about parking mostly. Euro cities are tight, people rarely use the backseats to ferry adults, so that’s where you can shave off a few inches. Also there is a market in Europe for cars that are both small AND nice, which isn’t something that’s really popular in the US.
And similar to the 2013-2015 Chevrolet Malibu. Chevrolet was trying to, for whatever reason, make inroads into the UK and EU markets, amidst a giant sponsorship of Manchester United, and so decided to put this version of the Malibu on the SWB Epsilon platform. Never mind that the Opel/Vauxhall Insignia already existed as an international-size sedan, and never mind that we ourselves received that car in the Buick Regal.
Goofy.
It wasn’t much roomier than the Cruze, truthfully. An emergency 2014 facelift scalloped out the backs of the front seats to carve out more rear legroom (and inexplicably deleted the powered parking brake and sliding cupholder cover), but the Malibu remained a fleet queen.
Ugh. That Malibu was such a massive failure for GM.
Chevy managed to put out a genuinely competitive midsizer in the Malibu for 2008 after the disaster that was the previous generation, which I to this day consider to be one of the least competitive cars ever made. But then somehow the redesigned the Malibu for ’13 to be uglier, more cramped, and with a crappier interior. A step back by every measure.
Launching with just the plain-looking Eco trim first and its eAssist mild hybrid system only cemented it too, arriving with the same gas mileage as regular nonhybrid Camcord but less trunk space due to the battery. And by extension a shrunken trunk vs. its predecessor which was already a bit tight for the class in that regard. Non-Eco new Malibus ended up fine in that regard, but by that point nobody cared.
THIS. All of the now dead sedans have one thing in common: it is that they were too small/inefficient to justify their price point. The Koreans understood the market way back in 2006 when the proper Sonata and Optima came out, not to sell a slightly larger than compact car with more options and call it good.
All of the surviving sedans are 20% larger, lighter by a good margin and don’t have a punishment for a base engine.
The 200 also suffered from a common malady of the time – useless mailslot trunk openings. The car should have been a hatchback like the A7, or even the in-house Lancer/LeBaron which would have made the car more practical. Additionally, it would have set it apart from Camry, Accord as they were going away from wagons to SUVs.
Of course, some additional engineering and structure would have been required, and Americans still don’t like hatchbacks. One reason why the Lancer/LeBaron didn’t do well (among many). The Big 2.5 have always struggled to build anything small, always have, and always did.
I kind of feel like the headline says “good car” but then the body of the article, with its transmission problems, lackluster fit and finish, and mediocre comfort kind of explain why nobody bought it.
I worked for FCA at the 200 launch and remember talking to one of the platform team guys and asking him about the curb weight and the tiny back seat, which were the two obvious flaws on an otherwise very nice sedan. The answer was along the lines of “Don’t ask, we already know”.
Still, these were very nice cars for the most part, especially in AWD Pentastar form. There was a time where virtually everyone at FCA with company car privileges drove a 200 AWD, including myself.
The V-6 had a nice exhaust snarl and was pretty damn quick for the time. Car and Driver tested a 200 FWD V-6 and got a 0-60 time of 5.7. They were fun to drive and handled decent enough for the segment. The big advantage was AWD which few competitors offered. In the snow belt, they sold well for a time and kinda had a domestic Audi A4 vibe.
The killer to the car was the fact that even though it had its charms and provided a unique choice, it just took too many incentive dollars to move them in a shrinking segment. The established volume players, Camry and Accord, were just too formidable to beat without spending a bunch of money that didn’t box with the billion dollar investment.
Sergio pulled the plug because the math just didn’t work out.
Today, they do make for a fun and inexpensive used sporty sedan, especially in AWD form. Nice ones are getting harder to find as people have figured out they have a great bang for the buck on the used market.
As much as I don’t particularly like them, I’m always on the look out for a fwd pentastar because it’s a nice enough 8k rocket
While I don’t think it would have been significantly more successful if it had come out a couple years sooner, it didn’t help. It was over a year everyone redesigned their midsize sedans. Not every one of those was well-received, but that meant they went back to the drawing board and made improvements within a year or two after the 200 came out.
The Dart was just a tad too late but not that much so; it still had been in the conversation during a “small car renaissance” from the Big 3, when they all boasted about being able to profitably build small cars in the US.
Something about the styling made it look smaller than it was to my eye, even though it wasn’t at a size disadvantage and even a bit longer/wider/taller than a Fusion. Maybe just the Dart relation, and if the 200 came first instead it wouldn’t have been an issue.
The rear seat entry excuse seemed like a scapegoat when really they just wanted to prioritize building more Jeeps. And its Cherokee counterpart did stand out against its segment rivals plus a better brand image.
I have a friend who owns one of these with AWD. He likes it. He’s not a car guy, but he likes it.
I had one for a rental and just remember the climate controls being a nightmare to operate. A few common options, like changing between upper and lower vents, were buried a couple menus deep in the touchscreen. I think there were trim levels that did this better, but that was my takeaway from the rental spec. Other than that, it was a car and seemed fine.
I had one as a rental for a 3,000 mile road trip. I agree, it was fine except for the transmission programming. When going through the rolling hills of southern Missouri on I-44, the transmission refused to downshift until the car had lost 5-10 MPH from the cruise control setpoint. I started manually downshifting at the base of the hills to keep the engine in an RPM range where it had enough power to hold speed.
Not even the arguably best Super Bowl ad of all time (Imported from Detroit) could overcome how bad the first gen 200 was… the second gen never had a chance
It really just needed the right Badassador to sell it
I never understood the hate for that car. It had everything going for it; it was a 300 but in a smaller package. I’d have gotten one myself, but I wanted a bigger sedan.
The 200, and to a much larger extent, the Dart, were the right cars at the wrong time.
Neither car was so awful as to justify their failure.
lolwut
I have always had a soft spot for these – from a distance. It is a handsome car with good sounding specs. But I’ve owned two 6’s, and the driving experience is just so much better even with a smaller engine and no AWD that I’d never consider owning a 200.
I drove one as a rental. It wasn’t terrible in general. I kind of liked it. But my god that 9 speed transmission was trash. It never knew what gear it wanted to be in, and most of the time it was wrong.
Manual mode was the best way to drive that automatic.
It was only a good car in a vacuum. The offerings from every other brand in the segment were better cars.
While the 200 was a true waste of resources, the Dart is the biggest success story of the century. The reason it was built was to fulfill the requirements of the agreement made with the US gov’t to be gifted full ownership of Chrysler. They managed to get enough of them to market that met the “40 mpg” requirement in time. So yes they lost money on everyone sold but it gained them full ownership of the company.
If the 300 was such a success, the 200 should followed the same path. On paper it was ok but the quality is such a miss. The design was good, I liked the way it looked, even the Pacifica adopted that design language and dashboard design.
The Fusion was much better that’s why you see those around all over the place running good.
I never drove the V6 AWD 200, but I had the base Dodge Fart for two weeks as a daily. The expression “Has a drivetrain like a big rubber band.” couldn’t have been more accurate. The handling wasn’t terrible, just sub par. The only good thing I can say is that the stereo didn’t blow and the AC did. Everything else was regular Dodge econobox level.
This article brought to you by Doug DeMuro.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We all knew this car was junky.
I think it was just poor timing more than anything. If they could have launched this a few years earlier — or even used it as a platform for a crossover — then it probably would have been fine. Same with Dart. The rear seat thing (headroom, head bashing, claustrophobia) is real and that’s why I don’t think I’ll ever own another sedan. It’s just not my idea of a good compromise all around. If I wanted lighter weight and better dynamics, I’ll get a coupe with a passable rear seat. If I want more utility, I’ll get a wagon (or as we call them today “crossovers”)
Yeah if anything Chrysler was early to recognize that sedans were going away (not quite early enough to avoid the development costs though).
I remember a lot of internet commentary at the time talking about how short-sighted and dumb the decision was, which was wrong at the time and silly now. Repeated again when Ford got rid of their sedans.
They just didn’t pivot to high quality crossovers like they should have.
“Ashes to ashes, funk to funky. We all knew this car was junky.” I’ll never hear this song any other way now. People go on and on about Dylan being a genius lyricist; ole Bob’s got nothing on Ash78.
Not to bum your high, but Ash78 borrowed from David Bowie’s song Ashes to Ashes.
I went to the Detroit Auto Show the year this was revealed. I remember sitting in it being so impressed. Never drove one, but it seemed like a huge step forward for the brand.
I honestly think that the Sebring was such a wet fart of a car, and the fact that the Sebring was renamed the 200 for the last few years of it’s life really hurt the proper 200’s chances to succeed.
I also think it was a huge mistake to name a car a number, especially a smaller, inferior number, when you’re selling the 300, complete with a history.
Who knows if the 300 is any good, but obviously the 200 is only 2/3s as good.
Not to mention it can be dangerous to go the other way too.
“Five Hundred? Why is it spelled out? Wait, you can’t get it with a V8?”