Posts Tagged ‘Chrysler’
Seriously ceremonial closing ceremonies…
Border closing ceremony at Wagah (source)
The only road crossing of the India-Pakistan border is at Wagah, a village on the trunk road between Lahore and Amritsar. A vestige of the controversial Radcliffe Line, the village was divided by independence in 1947– the eastern half of the village lies in the Republic of India; the western half, in Pakistan.
Michael Palin reports for the BBC on the border closing ceremony that’s held in Wagah at the end of each day:
As we brood over borders, we might recall that it was on this date in 1981 that Chrysler announced its 1980 results: the (then) largest annual operating loss in American history. Lee Iacocca, who had joined Chrysler in 1978 to turn it around, had realized that the company would need help and persuaded president Carter in 1979 to back $1.5 million in federally-backed financing… which was sufficient to get the company through its nadir and into 1981– when it released the K Car and later the mini-van, which it rode to recovery.
Chrysler’s loss in 1980? $1.8 Billion… which seems almost quaint when compared to the more recent accomplishments of, say, AOL-Time Warner: their 2002 loss was $98.7 Billion…
K Car (Dodge Aries) (source)
Carry that load…
From Photographer Alain Delorme, an extraordinary slideshow featuring things on the move in China.
(Thanks, Dan Sturges)
As we rebalance our loads, we might recall that it was on this date in 1998, five days after the company was formed by $37 billion merger, that DaimlerChrysler first traded in the New York Stock Exchange; at that moment, DaimlerChrysler was the fifth-largest auto manufacturer in the world (after General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen). The plan was for further growth, via the creation of a single powerhouse car company that could compete in all markets, all over the world… But in the event, Chrysler lost so much money– $1.5 billion in 2006 alone– that in 2007, Daimler paid a private equity firm to take the company off its hands. Two years later, in 2009, Chrysler filed for bankruptcy (again); in order to stay afloat, it merged with Italian automaker Fiat.
When the vinyl met the road…
From the ever-interesting folks at OOK (Observing Obscure Kulture), a tribute to the must-have auto accessory of the 50s and early 60s:
Hey, vinyl fanatics, have you ever wished you could listen to your records while cruising in your car? From the mid-50’s to the early 60’s, Chrysler made this dream a reality with two generations of in-car phonographs. The original Highway Hi-Fi hit the streets in Autumn of 1955, for model year 1956 — a factory option in the full Chrysler Corporation line of vehicles: Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, DeSoto and Imperial.
More at “Highway Hi-Fi.”
As we crank up the volume, we might devote ourselves to productive thought, following the example of Edward Gibbon, who wrote:
It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter (today, the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli), that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind … But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the City, rather than of the Empire.
Gibbon completed The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (timely reading even– perhaps especially– today) on June 27, 1787.
Gibbon, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
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