K Car Superstar Intro

The Chrysler K Car was the make it break car for Chrysler as it clawed its way out of bankruptcy the first time. When creating the K platform Chrysler engineers were striving to create a large number of cars from a small number of common parts. This was the reverse of what they had been been doing -- building a small number of common platforms (e.g. F/J/M and R) with few common components. Lee Iacocca claimed that the huge number of parts in inventory and the complexity of building many completely different versions of vehicles was one reason Chrysler was losing money, and directed the engineers to focus on making a large number of common parts where they would not be visible to customers; this was already common practice in Japan and Germany and would help to make the K-cars profitable even at low prices. The impetus to build the K Car came from the impact of the 1973 oil crisis, compounded by the 1979 energy crisis, American consumers began to buy fuel-efficient, low-cost automobiles built in Japan. Wi