News For The Day - 10 Jun 2009

So I woke up this morning, sat down at my computer to check my e-mail, and there it was, splattered all over my homepage "Fiat Buys Chrysler Assets". So the whore that is Mopar gets bought again. Here's a little history lesson: Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep used to all be separate companies, along with Eagle (anyone else REMEMBER Eagle?). Chrysler bought all these assets, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels (of garbage). Then, in the late '90s, the Chrysler Group was in trouble. They offered a merger with Daimler-Benz, manufacturers of Mercedes Benz and Maybach. The 'deal' was that Daimler-Benz would captain the combined company, and that in exchange for their help and world exposure, Chrysler plants would produce the Mercedes C- and M-Classes in US plants (thus, these models would not be considered 'imports' as defined by law). This worked(ish) for about 3 years, then it started to fall apart. Quality issues on the M-Class caused sales of that line to plummet. In 2005, the Daimler-Benz Corporation cut the Chrysler Group loose, due to high cost, low return, and a lack of quality control/quality assurance. Ownership of the Chrysler passed from Daimler-Benz to an employee consortium after Benz couldn't sell the group to any other manufacturer.

Now let's take a brief look at Fiat, the buying side of this transaction... For the last 20 or so years, Fiat has been majority owned by the Italian government. In Italy, majority ownership DOES mean control (unlike here, where even though the US government owns 50-some-odd-percent of GM's debt, 'we don't want to own GM'). So follow me here: The Italian government owns Fiat. Fiat owns Chrysler. QED, the Italian government owns Chrysler. IS ANYONE ELSE SEEING THIS?! I understand that Fiat doesn't get full ownership for X years, and that Fiat is supposed to start manufacturing something like 6 of their models here in the US (we saw how well that went before, no?), and all that jazz, but here's the bottom line: Fiat is BUYING Chrysler. This means that when the deal goes through, and AS SOON AS the deal goes through, Fiat starts CONTROLLING Chrysler. Puppet strings, smoke, and mirrors. Folks, this is NOT A GOOD THING. Personally, and I appreciate American cars as well as American industry, I'd rather see Chrysler fail completely than be owned by a foreign government. I can see it happen... Fiat buys Chrysler, then the US government contracts with Chrysler's husk to manufacture US military ground vehicles (trucks, transports, cars, etc), funnelling money DIRECTLY to the Italian government (which, last I checked, wasn't too overly fond of the US). Nostradamus I'm not, but this is just a little too obvious.