Sales numbers don't mean a whole lot when Ford was hemmorhaging cash at the time. They were losing money on the Taurii and "world cars" (Contour/Mistaque), and sure they made a few bucks on the Explorer - they paid for it later on. What ChryCo had in the 90s was a brand image that was unmatched by the white-bread…

The merger was designed more to fix Daimler's "at the time" problems with infrastructure (parts distribution, marketing, etc) as well as giving them time to set up shop with US-based manufacturing.

I'm going to type this as an open letter to BC: