I was sorry to see what happened to Home Depot, which used to be one of my absolutely favorite stores, also. I still have a $50 gift card to Home Depot because I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything there.

I suspect that the Home Depot story is going to parallel Chrysler’s. I also suspect that Walter Chrysler isn’t going to be thrilled.

And Cerberus won’t have a turnaround: it will be a Gekko sequel (sell the parts and dump it!).

No, I’m not an accountant; I’m actually an engineer, whose married to a good accountant, one that has grown her company’s business (but, unfortunately hasn’t been able to keep her CEO’s spending in check).

Until a group of hard-core elitists at Mercedes decided they were terrified at diluting the exclusivity of their brand. And so, the Chrysler Group was starved of product and the funding to develop its own up-to-date platforms. Never mind that Chrysler kept the cash coming in while Mercedes dealt with quality-control problems and sagging sales in the early part of this decade.

Look. Maybe Cerberus’s turn at the helm of Chrysler will work out much better than any of us expect. But, as of right now, it looks like our worst fears are about the be realized. I am not interested in buying a trebadged Chery with a Dodge nameplate on it.

All this is enough to make me think about buying a new Chevy, Pontiac, Ford or Mercury.

One of the biggest responsibilities of a leader is to ensure the continued success of his organization after he leaves.

Modern CEO’s don’t seem to be held accountable for that. They should. More of their stock options should be held from vesting until 5 years after they leave. Then maybe they would pay attention.

Nope, none of the late American car guys are getting credit as “great” because they should have made corrections back in the seventies. Anyone after that who had the right ideas apparently never got control.

Next will be suppliers and vendors installing their parts on the cars and trucks to save having Chrysler employees do it. Hey, it was a mess at HD, but maybe it will work on a Dodge.

This guy is just out for himself and is an example that idiots can be in charge and rich. He managed to savage Home Depot and provide a great opportunity for Lowes expansion.

I do not work for HD but have some friends who did. Chaos at the top and praise for the boss will be the norm, not matter what investors or customers might see.

As for my former position, my sources tell me that my job is coming back stateside this month. Good job Bob! And good luck Chrysler employees.

See:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070808/AUTO01/708080379/1148/rss25

“Chrysler LLC is discouraging white-collar employees from applying for jobs at former parent Daimler AG or its Chrysler Financial unit in a bid to keep jittery workers from leaving the automaker during its transition under a new owner and a new chief executive.” 8/8/07 Detroit News.

Sit, stay….until we are ready to boot you out the door.

Cote was welcomed as heir apparent by the (very) longtime head of TRW, a tier-1 automotive supplier of everything from seatbelts and airbags to electronics.

Within 2 years of being named CEO TRW as a company was decimated of employees and manufacturing, had this and that division sold off or spun off, and then quickly ran out the back door, leaving TRW reeling, a shell of its former self.

This Chrysler thing has all the appearance of an individual chosen not for management skills, but for overseeing whatever it takes for quick bottom line enhancement so that Chrysler can a) go public, or b)sold out, Cerberus can make a killing, and whoever the bag holder is in 2-3 years (China, or IPO shareholders) is stuck with the fruits of this play.

Waring makes a perfectly great blender–bombproof construction, just two speeds, and about $130. Their sales pale in comparison to $30 Osters with a billion junk buttons at Wal-Mart. There *ARE* good cars out there: BMW 3-series and Toyota Land Cruisers for example. But they’re expensive.

Can anyone really make a GOOD blender for $30 or a GOOD car for $20K? Since cars are appliances to most people, aren’t they just going to buy crap anyway? If good is what they want, well, it’s already out there for the buying, and they’re not doing it.

There’s only room for so many crap blenders and so many crap cars.

Nardelli may well shake things up at Chrysler, and Chrysler may well need shaking up, but as a Home Depot shareholder I’d point out that this doesn’t mean anyone needs things to be shaken up _a_la_Nardelli_.

Further, you could blame Lynne Townshend, for totally destroying Chrysler’s management structure with his oddball theories on how employees should be trained. And bad investments into foreign car companies. His decisions in the 60’s directly lead to the crisis in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

Without Iaccoca, Chrysler would have ceased to exist in 1981. His greatest failure was that he didn’t reinvest in R&D and core platform development. This led to the problems in the late 80’s. (Most consumers didn’t want new 8 year old cars: who knew…?) But Iaccoca ultimately left the company in pretty good shape, in the early 90’s. They had new platforms, reasonably good cars, and a clear plan for moving forward.

The current failure is the total responsibility of the Germans. Despite having total managerial control over Chrysler and deep cash reserves, they took something that worked reasonably well and had some potential and ran it into the ground. To say the least.

Cerberus paid ~$8 Billion for Chrysler? Sheesh, Starbucks is worth $20 Billion.

With the right labor agreement that allows them to shed jobs and close factories (even if it takes a strike), the Chrysler and Jeep NAMES alone are worth 8 billion+. It’ll be interesting how they get to the point where they can carve out the value…

Chrysler doesn’t have any product right now and precious little in the pipeline. You can cut and slash all you want, but a car company without product that consumers want to buy is dead in the water.

If Lee Iacoca was such a success, why did Chrysler so quickly turn back into trash?

He was a limited success with a great personality.

I think that Chainsaw Al would be the perfect antidote to Rabid Rick. Bring him on!