Chrysler to Keep Making More Trucks Than Cars

Chrysler Corp. said Monday that it will keep producing far more trucks than cars, even though a new agreement on global warming threatens to force more small-car production.

Thomas T. Stallkamp, Chrysler’s new president, said the auto maker is giving consumers what they want by producing bulky, lower-mileage vehicles.

“We are still trying to make all the trucks and sport-utilities and minivans we can,” he said. “The issue becomes will these sort of agreements start to force consumers to change, against what they’re telling us they want right now?”

About 68% of the vehicles Chrysler has sold this year are gas-guzzling vans, pickups and sport-utility vehicles. That is far ahead of most Chrysler competitors. Light trucks account for 58% of 1997 sales at Ford Motor Co. and 43% at General Motors Corp.

The environmental accord calls for the United States to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to 7% below what they were in 1990. The goals must be achieved between 2008 and 2012.

That could lead the government to force production of more high-mileage vehicles.

But Stallkamp said the agreement is surrounded by uncertainty, such as when it will be submitted to the Senate for ratification and what exactly it will require auto companies to do.

Meanwhile, he questioned how much industry is to blame for global warming.

“Climatic changes have always occurred,” he said. “I’m not convinced that global warming is in fact a result of industrialization or if it’s not just some sort of other evolutionary thing--if it’s happening.”