The Middle Class - a comparison of the Chrysler Sebring/Dodge Stratus and the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and related information - Statistical Data Included

Automotive Industries, July, 2000 by Dale Jewett

"When you say C-Class, you're intoning Mercedes-Benz -- and that transcends the marketplace. It doesn't matter if the car is smaller," observes industry analyst Jim Hall, of the AutoPacific Group in Southfield, Mich. "The C-Class dukes it out with the Oldsmobile Aurora and Lincoln KS, significantly larger cars," he adds.

When it comes to sharing components between luxury and middle-market cars, automakers have focused on parts that buyers can't really see or feel. Those include wiring, airbag systems, window lift motors and internal seat components such as lumbar mechanisms.

In the view of some industry experts, it's better when components flow down from the luxury vehicle to the mid-market vehicle, versus the latter. "If the parts flow up, there's a performance and image problem," CSM's Robinet explains. "When the parts flow down, then you have a cost problem."

As DaimlerChrysler evaluates its platform lineup for the future with an eye to cutting costs, another factor is the automaker's acquisition last March of a controlling interest in Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Many auto analysts expect DaimlerChrysler in the future to lean on Mitsubishi's expertise for developing small-car platforms, leaving trucks and midsized cars to Chrysler and luxury vehicles to Mercedes. That strategy could spell a dim future for the new JR platform.

"If Chrysler could go back five years ago, I think it would reassess what it was doing with the JR and do a better job of making the Neon platform bigger, so it could be a world fighter," says Robinet. "Ford has done that with an upsized small car, the Focus, covering territory formerly covered by the Escort and the Contour. The Japanese are experts in small and compact platforms, and they'll spin everything off of those for mass market vehicles."

Narrowing the gap

In the near future, the orbits of the new vehicles from Mercedes and Chrysler will draw a bit closer. The Sebring sedan and convertible were styled knowing they would be exported to Europe, to join the Neon, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Chrysler Voyager minivan. The Sebring convertible will be the model that comes closest to the C-Class in price.

Mercedes, meanwhile, is giving serious study to bringing a hatchback version of the C-Class to the U.S. market. (See sidebar.)

"DaimlerChrysler needs to cultivate the image of Mercedes throughout its lineup so that some of the same pricing and product philosophies transfer to Chrysler," analyst Hall says. "But that's going to be a long row to hoe."

With the product pendulum swinging back toward cars and car-based utility vehicles, DaimlerChrysler is looking for ways of sharing components between the Mercedes and Chrysler sides to cut costs, without diluting the Mercedes mystique. The new C-Class and Sebring/Stratus are just the first step. The midsized sedan is far from dead.

Platform family trees

Dodge Stratus/Chrysler Sebring

2001 -- Sedan, Convertible (JR)

2001 -- Coupe (ST)

2003 -- Mild reskin due

Mercedes-Benz C-Class Sedan

2001 -- Sedan (W203)