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not individual owners, The actual company
A brief history of Jeep: 75 years from Willys to Wrangler
World War II was just the start of the battle for one of America's most loved brands
BY LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE, AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
JUL 13, 2016
‘Jeep Curse’
Jeep’s string of owners tended to struggle, giving rise to an unflattering explanation for their collective failures: the “Jeep Curse.” From Bantam to Willys to Kaiser to AMC, each corporate entity that had acquired Jeep had subsequently failed – more often than not for reasons that had little to do with Jeep.
Yet Iacocca coveted Jeep. He recognized that the off-road brand complemented Chrysler’s offerings. “We aren’t just combining our strengths. We’re increasing them,” the former Chrysler chairman declared when Chrysler purchased AMC for $1.5 billion.
Former Delphi CEO Steve Miller negotiated Chrysler’s deal to buy AMC from Renault in 1987. In his 2008 book, The Turnaround Kid, Miller recalled the reaction at Chrysler after it had acquired Jeep.
“Sixty days after we acquired the company, almost every executive at Chrysler had replaced his car with a Jeep,” Miller wrote. “The parking lot outside our office looked like a Jeep dealership.”
In most respects, Iacocca was right: The addition of Jeep along with key executive additions such as Francois Castaing made Chrysler a more valuable company. Chrysler used its resources to improve existing products such as the XJ Cherokee, and in 1992, introduced the ZJ Grand Cherokee by driving it through a plate-glass window at the Detroit auto show.
And as Jeep’s popularity grew, so did Chrysler’s profitability. The No. 3 U.S. automaker had become a potent global player with the addition of Jeep and consumers’ nearly limitless demand for SUVs.
Ultimately, Chrysler drew interest from Daimler AG, which, in 1998, combined with Chrysler in a $38 billion “merger of equals.”
The DaimlerChrysler era saw some of the best-ever Jeep decisions, including new, modern assembly plants as well as the addition of two rear doors to the Wrangler to create the Wrangler Unlimited.
But it also witnessed some of the worst, including development of the carlike, Jeep-in-name-only Compass and Patriot, which featured front-wheel drive and continuously variable transmissions.
Less than a decade later, Daimler paid $675 million to Cerberus Capital Management to take Chrysler and Jeep off its hands. And two years after that, Chrysler including Jeep sought bankruptcy protection and had to be rescued by the government.
The curse, it seems, had struck again.
And again.
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/a1849926/how-has-jeep-gotten-here-check-out-their-miraculous-75-year-story/