Chris, I am more than happy to sign this petition but I have some questions:
1) Are you prepared to email our membership and provide them a link to this petition? Otherwise the effort will not generate the needed exposure.
That is not up to me. We are having our board of directors call next week and this will certainly be a topic of discussion. As this is more of a political stance we need to make sure everybody is comfortable with it.
2) Should we include an indication of Chrysler product ownership, or should we gather this data of club members independent of this petition? It strikes me as this would be powerful information for Chrysler to have. I believe that previous VCA leadership had statistics on this. Have they been updated?
I suspect the petition could be modified to indicate number of Chrysler products owned and we do indeed have previous studies we have shared with the current management. Realize that the folks in charge are the exact same people we have been working with for the past couple years - there were no major changes. We need to be careful that the results would be favorable. If we only get 200 signatures and those 200 people owned all of 300 Chrysler products, it would be very underwhelming and undermine our position. As most lawyers will tell you, don't ask a question in court unless you already know the answer.
3) Will you or other club leadership contact the media to advise them of this effort?
Again, this is a board decision and would come down to whether or not it is newsworthy. Certainly a petition with tens of thousands of signatures would be notable, but <200 people is hardly worth a blog entry - unless you are demonstrating a lack of interest in keeping it alive. Imagine the damage it would cause to see "the Viper Club asked its 4000 members how many wanted to see the line continued and only 143 responded". Again, be careful you aren't shooting yourself in the foot.
4) How long will the petition be active before it is submitted?
If submitted on behalf of the VCA, then it would again be a board decision. Regardless, it would make sense to balance between a significant number of signatures and sooner than later. We don't want to send it in with three signatures but we also don't want to wait six months either.
5) Why do you believe that Chrysler would be upset by any broad effort the club makes to save the Viper? I certainly did not detect any hint of adverse reaction to the petition I already submitted, in fact quite the contrary yet this seems to be your position - "let's not bite the hand that feeds us". Truth is if Chrysler kills the Viper they are no longer the club's supporting manufacturer. I know of no company that would object to customers showing support for one of their brands.
There is passion and there is pushy. I can tell you that Bob Carroll and myself have been on the phone or in meetings with folks concerning the Viper's future every single week since November of last year, including during the bankruptcy process. Of course their customer service folks will smile and tell you "thanks for the great feedback, we will get right on it!" Then hang up the phone, roll their eyes, and shove it in a drawer to collect dust. That is not to say that they did or would do that, but that many, many businesses operate that way. "The customer is always right" - at least as far as they know.
You may or may not recall the message delivered during VOI 10 by both VCA leaders and Chrysler themselves: They announced that they would be selling the platform in order to save it. Indeed, keeping and building upon it didn't seem to be brought up as an option. Threatening to walk away from Chrysler products as a whole, as many have already done, is simply not in the best interest of the club. We were forced to take a similar position on Tator's Dodge: While a very loyal fan of Chuck's and supportive of him in every way possible, we also know that if we had threatened to stop buying Chrysler products they could have easily said, "to heck with it, let's just kill the Viper, ignore the VCA, and be done with all the hassle." When it comes to the carrot or the stick, you don't play that game with an 800 pound gorilla - you will lose.
6) While club leadership seems to be ok with the Viper brand being sold off to another party, I do not believe this is in the long term best interests of the Viper, Chrysler, or the club. I believe that there are many people within Chrysler that believe the same as I do, in fact I've spoken to some. Have you polled the membership of their views on this?
That is because you are not as close to it as many others are. While it is easy for somebody to say, "Make it 700 horsepower and price it at $50,000", the reality is that it simply isn't practical. This has NOTHING to do with what club leadership thinks, but is the harsh reality in today's automotive climate. My dream scenario? Dodge announces they are keeping the Viper, introducing a new body style in 2011/2012, creating a true "halo" marketing campaign (using the Viper to elevate the rest of the Dodge product line), and returning to Le Mans. Unfortunately, that scenario is unlikely at best.
Again, from Chrysler's very own executives last fall: They were selling the Viper as it provided the best possible chance of
saving it. Is that still true today? Well, orders are way down, the new corporate partners have two other "halo" brands, and the Viper is, by most public impressions (incorrectly) one of the most environmentally unfriendly cars on the planet. So when you add it all up (and as was discussed with a senior Chrysler executive even today), the car might be better off under an independent owner that would recognize it for what it is and not allow it to languish or die based on what other people perceive it to be.
Again, I hope Dodge renews its lease on life, as does just about everybody in the VCA. You don't need a poll to figure that out. You simply need to look closely at what all indications have been in the past, and that was in order to save it you needed to find somebody to buy it. We hope that is no longer the case, but we wouldn't stake everything on that hope. We instead need to base our actions on what Chrysler has told us previously until told otherwise. And support it accordingly if it means saving the Viper.
Thanks again for your support, both of the club and of the Viper platform itself.
Chris
Kevin
