Spending some time last night on twitter, I ran across a post by user @_Spock_  that caught my interest.  CarNewsArticles.com has posted a rather funny and interesting article tracing both Star Trek's & Chrysler's need for their Reliants to be successful.

It’s difficult to understate the importance of the Reliant. It single-handedly revived a moribund franchise, one which made some truly disastrous decisions in the late ’70s. It made its parent brand interesting again–sure, the quality wasn’t as high as some of the competition out there, and you could tell that the Reliant and its contemporary kin were put together on a budget, but it was still far better executed than anything that preceded it. It wasn’t as slow, as heavy, nor as ponderous as its predecessors–in short, it proved that somebody finally got “it.” Were it not for Reliant, the Star Trek movie franchise would have died, never to return.

Oh, you thought I was talking about the K-car, didn’t you?

In the early 1980s, two American institutions, the Chrysler Corporation and the Star Trek franchise, were teetering at the precipice of failure and irrelevance. Chrysler, perennially a distant third among the Big Three domestic car manufacturers, was on the verge of bankruptcy and had been forced into the indignity of groveling for its solvency in the form of loan guarantees from the federal government. The company badly needed a big hit to repay those loans and to assure its future.

Likewise, while Star Trek had created an enthusiastic fan following with the famous TV show and lightly-watched animation series in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by the beginning of the 1980s its future was in doubt. Based on the fan loyalty inspired by the original series, Paramount had spent $46 million to produce the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That movie, dubbed “The Motionless Picture” by the cruel and cynical, made money but was critically panned and sucked the energy out of the franchise. Given the cancellation of the original show after only three seasons and the relative lack of success of the animated series and the movie, the enthusiasm for more Star Trek appeared to be at a nadir. It would have been very logical to conclude that Star Trek was winding down its run.

As David intimates above, it was Reliant time. Chrysler’s recovery depended on its 1981 launch of its pivotal K-car platform, represented most prominently by the Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant. Star Trek’s ongoing relevance hinged on the success of the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, starring Chrysler pitchman Ricardo Montalban and his commandeered starship, the USS Reliant. (source CarNewsArticles.com)

Read the full article here.

Image credit Trekcore.com