New Chrysler executive James Press tries to jump-start the troubled auto company

It was a dramatic transition, from being the only American on the board of the world's most successful car company to co-president and vice chairman of the smallest, and most troubled, of the Big Three U.S. auto manufacturers.

Newly private Chrysler made Press its key industry hire. Since then, Chrysler has signed a cost-cutting contract with the United Auto Workers and announced plans to cease production of four vehicles, cut production by more than 1 million vehicles and shrink its pool of dealerships.

The company also signed a pact with Nissan Motor Co. to produce trucks in exchange for small cars that it will sell in South America and, eventually, the U.S., and inked a deal with Chinese carmaker Chery Automobile Co. to make small cars that could make Chrysler the first company to bring Chinese autos to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Chrysler has fallen to No. 5 in U.S. vehicle sales and, according to Press, has no hopes to turn a profit until 2010 at the earliest.

A California native and an avid swimmer (he calls swimming his job and cars his hobby), Press has lived in Japan and New York but now calls Detroit home. He visited the Los Angeles Times this week to discuss the rebuilding of Walter P. Chrysler's auto company. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Chrysler has had some pretty significant decreases in the volume of vehicles it sells. You've described that as a good thing. Can you explain?

Volume is vanity; gross profit is sanity. In an attempt to try and maintain a bigger market share and a higher sales volume, we were making decisions that economically weren't in the best interest of the company. Fleet sales are an example of that. There's no economic benefit, because the long-term effect of fleet is to deteriorate your residual values. That's a case where we could actually sell fewer cars but financially be in better shape.

The old metric of volume doesn't really work anymore, because the more some companies sell, the more they lose.

What's the ideal number you want to get to in terms of U.S. sales volume?

We're closer to 2 million or 2.5 million per year as a car company (as opposed to a goal of 4.5 million previously). The market is going to recover in 2010, 2011 or 2012, and we've got some good new products coming and that growth should be attainable.