In late 1984 Chrysler was about to go bankrupt. Lee Iococca ran a deal with the federal government to bail out the company but the provision was that it had to stay with its core business--automobile manufacturing. It needed to divest itself of outboard and marine business.
Boats were originally Lone Star rebadged as Chrysler then later on The Chrysler team designed some beautiful hulls that were produced in Plano Texas. I don't remember what happened to the hull manufacturing business.
However, Chrysler engine production was bought by US Marine, a division of Brunswick, which also owns Mercury, Mariner, Bayliner, Maxxum, etc.
No, quality did not degenerate. There are simply less and less Chrysler engines so the bulk of engine problems on the forum are Force. IF you compare number of posts of the major engine brands to quantity of production you will see that all brands have about the same percentage of problems. In actuality, Brunswick started making design changes, incorporating Mercury parts, and engine performance improved over Chrysler even though the basic block design stayed the same.
Force engines were very old school design and were relatively dirty engines. Because they directly competed as a low price entry level engine with Mariner and because of increasingly stringent pollution regulations, the Force brand was discontinued.
For more info, google The Chrysler Crew. This is a site for Chrysler boat and engine fans.
I bought it from kept it inside and meticulously maintained it. So there's not many Chrysler outboards around anymore? Kinda explains why I can't find the only part I need!