Saying Goodbye To The PT Cruiser

After ten years, and 1.3 million vehicles, the last PT Cruiser rolls off the assembly line at Chrysler's assembly plant in Tolouca, Mexico today.

The 1930's gangster styling made the PT Cruiser an instant hit.  But it was also one of the first small cars, with SUV-like utility.

"Y'know, when it came out it was quite a vehicle in terms of everything from it's styling, to its price to its functionality," says Karl Brauer, who's a senior analyst at Edmunds.com.

The PT Cruiser had a sticker price in the mid teens, but many dealers were able to command even more from consumers who didn't want to wait. 

Chrysler sold more than 120 thousand cruisers every year until 2008, when demand started to wane.  They added a number of special editions, from panel vans to Woodward Avenue Cruisers, but never did a total update of the vehicle.  That's something that's traditionally done every five years or so.

"It never was redesigned completely," says Brauer.  "You just can't stay competitive in the market with that kind of time span gone by, and not redoing the vehicle."

But not spending hundreds of millions on a complete update also allowed cash-starved Chrysler to keep making money on the PT Cruiser, even with lower sales.  When Fiat took over Chrysler last year, the company decided to keep the vehicle in production one additional year, because they needed the cash.

The PT Cruiser is making way for a new small car, the Fiat 500, which will be built at that same Chrysler plant in Mexico.   In some ways, the 500 shares a lot of the same attributes that brought car buyers to the PT Cruiser

"I think that certainly has that retro thing going on, as well as an economic point of view," says edmund's Brauer.  "It's going to be a low price vehicle, which the PT Cruiser certainly was considered when it came out."

Follow this link to hear our full interview with Karl Brauer.