Mopar will make the move to Jeep

Christine Cortez TITLE: Senior vice president, global service and parts COMPANY: MAIN POINT: QUOTE: "Mopar has Jeep as a first cousin and we've been missing a whole segment of off-road enthusiasts out there." Chrysler group The legendary Mopar performance brand is back, and it will expand by going with the Jeep brand.

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS WORLD CONGRESS

Bradford Wernle | | Automotive News / January 16, 2007 - 3:13 pm

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DETROIT -- Chrysler's performance-parts brand Mopar will be looking in-house for its next expansion: the Jeep brand.

"Mopar has Jeep as a first cousin, and we've been missing a whole segment of off-road enthusiasts out there," said Christine Cortez, senior vice president of global service and parts for DaimlerChrysler Motors Co. LLC.

"I don't think we've ever raced off-road," she said in a speech today at the Automotive News World Congress in Dearborn, Mich. "We'll go after off-road the same way we're going after other enthusiast groups: Build authentic performance parts, prove it on the track -- or off the track, in the case of Jeep -- and let the nitrous kick in and spread the gospel for you."

Cortez focused her speech on the growth of the Mopar brand. Mopar came into being "when somebody back in 1937 was looking around for a new line of antifreeze, and he ended up with a simple combination of the words 'motor' and 'parts.' "

The real birth of Mopar came in the 1960s when the name was made famous by such legendary drag racers as "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, Ronnie Sox and Richard Petty, who took the 426 Hemi to the NASCAR circuit. That's when Mopar came to mean "More Power."

Those were the glory days for Mopar. But in subsequent years, especially when Chrysler hit lean times, there was less emphasis on all things high octane, and the brand faded a bit.

So Mopar did a "health check" on its brand in 2002 by doing some research, Cortez said. The research found Mopar enthusiasts who had stayed with the brand even though they felt neglected. They tended to favor rear-wheel-drive muscle.

But the research also found a new generation of racing enthusiasts who had never heard of Mopar. They were young racers on the West Coast who were driving turbocharged, front-wheel-drive subcompacts, a form of racing pioneered in Japan. So the Neon SRT4 seemed the perfect vehicle to get a boost from Mopar.

Another new kind of racing from Japan, called drifting, came to the United States. The rear-drive Viper was a natural for that circuit. And Nick Hogan, the 16-year-old son of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, expressed interest in driving one on the VH1 TV show "Hulk Knows Best."

The elder Hogan contacted Mopar, and the event was arranged.

"We didn't find Hulk. He found us," Cortez said.

Mopar also built a team of midget drivers with the help of former NASCAR champ Tony Stewart.

All these things, coupled with Mopar's traditional strength on the drag strips of America, combined for the rebirth of a venerable brand.

Cortez said Mopar also would grow as Chrysler expands its sales overseas. She said Mopar now has enthusiast clubs in such countries as Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom -- none of them with any prodding from Mopar.

Said Cortez: "I guess the brand swims."