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No, shrinking the Charger down to Guilia size car would be the mistake. If they expanded the Alfas to be the size of their American counterparts... They'll be the weight of them as well.

This is untrue. The 300 is used for police duty in Australia now that both Ford and GM have ceded that market. The 300 was also sold as a Lancia in Europe, and with a properly stocked Chrysler brand, the entire brand should have been branded as Lancia or just kept as Chrysler and sold in Europe. The Europeans had an unusual love for the Town and Country and the GM vans. The new Pacifica would have done well there. The 300 with a 2.0T should absolutely be sold in China. The Chinese just lowered their import tariff from 25% to 15% effective July 1. They could still be built in Brampton and shipped over. Stick the Pacifica hybrid on the same boat and price it like the Enclave. The failure of Chrysler and Dodge rests entirely on Sergio's nationalism and inability to effectively use the brands he got in the acquisition. He is an absolute failure of a CEO.

Oh nooooo we're no longer the good guy trying to help everybody out? ?

You're getting your terms mixed up, (not entirely your fault, the automotive media is mostly to blame). Architecture and platform are two different things. Two very different vehicles can share architecture but be on different platforms. Architecture is where the dirty bits are built in a way that they fit everything that shares the architecture. Think power window motors, HVAC controls (which are all computerized now), dashboards, even power steering pumps, or suspension components. Platform is the skeleton that underpins the car. You can switch out sections of the skeleton to make different parts of the car larger or smaller, but you can't do that too much without running into either poor crash test ratings on the large size cars or heavy weight on the lower sized cars. Some examples of shared architecture but different platforms would be the Equinox, Malibu, and Traverse.

I didn't say it couldn't be stretched, but CTS would likely be the upper limit. Charger/300 are larger than that. The 300 is 3 inches longer and 3 inches wider. Moving to a CTS sized car would be a big move down for 300. If Dodge or Chrysler did get a car on the Giorgio platform (and they should) it should be more of a mid-sizer below the Charger/300. If I were Sergio. I would use make take the Charger / Challenger / 300 / and Ghibli and put them on a new platform above Giorgio. Alfa could get in on that one as well. That way everyone gets a piece of the action and there is very little overlap. You have family car (charger), Pony car (challenger), American soft luxury (300), European luxury (Ghibli), and European Sport (Alfa-whatever). In spite of FCA's protests to the contrary, I still insist that the Ghibli is a heavily re-worked LX car. There are far too many hardpoints on the two cars that are identical, too much shared hardware, that they are not at least partially related.

Back in 2014, mercedes claimed an unspecified but "dramatic" weight loss for the upcoming MRA platform. In June of 2015, the E-class was supposed to lose about 330 lbs. By October that estimate was reduced to 220 lbs. But Google is stating that a 2015 e-class starts at 3825 lbs and the 2018 e-class starts at 3792 lbs. Looks like "German engineering" took a "dramatic weight reduction" and dialed it back to a 33 lb savings.

Most likely, we are already past the point of changing the direction of the climate and will now likely need to do both.

That's as much of a coupe as my Toronado is a Super Duty Pickup.

Yup it was sharp. Pictures never did the color justice IMHO. This was a nice Full Size sedan. Would have loved it if they had offered this interior on the Impala SS Maroon.

The most flexible platform I can think of is VW's MQB. It can go as small as Audi TT all the way up to VW Atlas (or Passat if you're looking just at length). Now, the current C-Class is on a new highly modular platform that Mercedes is calling MRA, but the S-Class isn't on that yet. I would have thought the E-Class which was recently re-done would have been on MRA, but I cannot find any evidence of that. One would think if it were on a new wunder-platform, they'd advertise it. So far, the only car on MRA is the C-Class.

FCA doesn't have M-B's development budget...and though they are Italian, platforms aren't pasta..

Sergio sacrificed Chrysler and Dodge in order to necromance Alfa and Maserati and try to keep Fiat (brand) alive. Fiat took over Chrysler Group in late 2009. At that point, Alfa had only 4 mainstream models and only one of those survived beyond 2011 (the MiTo... an Alfa-Romeo branded Fiat 500 competitor). By 2014, when the first of Sergio's 5-year plans was out, Alfa had only the MiTo and Giulietta (a Mazda 3 look-alike with Alfa styling). What was IT. A micro-car and a compact, neither of which were any more premium than their Fiat counterparts. Maserati had the Quattroporte and Grand Turismio ... and that was it for Maser... They sold 4,489 vehicles in 2009. These were two brands that were practically dead. Sergio starved Chrysler and Dodge of new and updated product in order to bring his dead Italian brands back and in the process killed the American brands. He even tried to revive Lancia at the expense of Chrysler. This latest 5 year plan highlights how much of a failure Sergio is as a CEO. He is willing to sacrifice entire brands from the US just to prop up his failed Italian brands. Yes, the Charger and 300 are both full size cars. It's like XTS (300) verse ATS (Guilia) In SUVs, the Stelvio the size of the Compass. They're not going to make a Grand Cherokee out of that.

It would be really interesting to see a weight breakdown of a given car: how much is glass, plastic, steel, aluminum, etc.

Agreed, cars from 50 years ago were death traps. The amount of structural reinforcement in cars today in incredible. Then you look at how much sound deadening material, speakers, power heated seats, Nav systems and computers, glass roofs, which requires more bracing, etc get added. A 90s Cadillac had power, heated, leather seats, 8 speakers, and a sunroof and that made it a luxury car because the average Chevy had manual crank windows and a 4 speaker am/fm radio practically. Now a Kia Forte or Focus has a heated steering wheel, self parking, radar cruise control, etc, they have equipment you got on year 2000 S-class now on compact cars, just with a plastic dash rather than wood and leather. All that crap adds weight.

There are models of 3-series that weigh more than my big old body-on-frame boat of an '81 Toronado with a 307 cubic inch iron block under the aircraft carrier sized steel hood. A 4-cylinder 330xi weighs more than a V6 '81 Toronado A 6-cylinder 340xi weighs more than a V8 '81 Toronado. And for all the tech and weight savings they put into the M5 carbon fiber and all.... it still weighs 500lbs more than my iron beast. Now, I'm not comparing performance at all of course.... but these are generally considered among the lightest cars in their class and they they all tip the scales more than some "old tech" Oldsmobile.

A 6-cylinder 5-series is 4,019 A 6-cylinder E-class is 4,043 A 6-cylinder A6 is 4,135 Tell me more about how the 300C Limited V8 being 4,029 is vastly uncompetitive.

Ask yourself what happened in the industry. Over time, cars in general shrunk, had 1000-some lbs of cast iron & steel replaced with aluminum and plastic, got body panels switched over to aluminum or even carbon fiber, all rims are AL, what sheetmetal left is thinner & thinner, glass is thinner, even carpeting is thinner. All these advances... and cars are heavier than ever in the grand scheme of things. 1980 Turbo Trans Am, iron block/heads V8, all-steel body (other than front fascia/rear bumper), 198-in overall length, curb weight: 3673. How does a smaller, 35-year newer Camaro range from 3700-4350 lbs with all its aluminum & plastic (& carbon fiber?) and still be called 'progress'? I mean, I don't expect the opposite; that a '15 Camaro should weigh 3000 or less, but at least offset all the wiring/sensors/ etc with the construction lightening... but no. Just imagine a '15 Camaro with an all-steel body & an Iron block/heads; it'd weigh 5000+.

If the source wasn't Jalopnik, probably.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the current platform aside from needing better material fit and finish. They are full size and should remain so... not squished down to Euro standards.

This sucks that the GLobal Executive for Chevrolet smashes the pace car before the race even gets started.

Loved the Impala SS, One car I really wanted to own, but just was never financially able too when they were being built and sold. Loved it in the Maroon color they had.