Chrysler Vice Chairman and President Jim Press says that Chrysler can be "viable" by spring -- with "viable" defined as solvent and investing in new products that will allow the company to repay its government loans in the future. He told reporters at the National Automobile Dealers Association annual convention that the company can achieve viability even with light vehicle sales slipping from 2008's 13.2 million units to just over 10 million in 2009.

Press said that the company's new product lineup, loosening credit markets, and buyer incentives would help the company to get back on track.

Chrysler appears to be pulling out all the stops to improve it performance -- but not in a good way. Yesterday I wrote about the pressure that Chrysler was putting on dealerships to order more cars than they think they can sell. This could prop up sales volume in the short-term with disastrous long-term consequences: some dealers who can't afford to pay for the cars they ordered and others who are so stuffed with inventory that they won't be ordering anything new for a long time.

It's disappointing that Chrysler's deliberate and unapologetic efforts to artificially prop up its sales numbers aren't getting more media attention. These efforts may allow the company to create a facade of a turnaround and gain access to more taxpayer money, without actually having changed anything of substance.

Chrysler has a new plan to try to work its way through the recession: Convince dealerships to buy cars they don't need.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that "Chrysler LLC executives are fanning out across the country to ask dealers to order new cars and trucks as part of an urgent bid to increase revenue following the company's flirtation with financial collapse."

Chrysler is offering bonuses to dealers who agree to take delivery of more inventory. The idea seems to be to pump up the company's sales volume to help secure an additional $3 billion in government loans.

Here's the problem: If dealers order inventory based on pressure to prop up Chrysler's income statement instead of their own estimates of market demand, they'll end up with huge inventories of cars that they can neither sell nor pay for.

Autoblog informs us that Chrysler has hired a key executive from Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM). James Press, the top-ranking Toyota executive in North America, will join the Chrysler Group as Vice Chairman and President. The announcement was made by Chrysler earlier this morning, and you can read the press release at Autoblog.

At Toyota, Mr. Press' title was President and Chief Operating Officer of Toyota North America, and during his tenure Toyota made significant gains in the American market. Mr. Press is widely respected in the industry, earning the honor of being the first non-Japanese member of Toyota's board, as well as Automotive Executive of the Year.

This change at Chrysler, owned by Cerberus Capital Management since early August, has to be seen as good news. By all reports, Mr. Press loves cars (as opposed to finance or advertising, the preoccupations of most American car execs) and his experience with the world's best automaker should help Chrysler enormously. Interestingly, Mr. Press was quoted in The New York Times in April, when he was still at Toyota, as saying that Chrysler had "solid products" and a bright future. Maybe he knew then that Detroit would be calling for help.