Why The Chrysler 200 Was Such A Massive Flop Despite Being A Good Car

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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