Would it make sense to spend bailout billions making Chrysler and GM retirees into federal workers with federal retirement benefits? Takes away one of the ongoing costs we’re probably stuck with anyway without the inefficiency of UAW and management skim off the top. Bypass the company and the union and spend the money paying off the workers directly.

Why should the tax payers pay for the pension of a bankrupt company?

When did that start? I thought employees of Enron lost everything, pension included.

Taking Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy will drive Ford into bankruptcy too. Suppliers are losing the edge.

No really, even a C11 supplier would be able to supply Ford, knowing the parts will be paid in full.

In the worst case, give Ford a bridge loan for that. Such a loan should only be given to a viable business. Ford, as the only American car maker, can be very viable with all the conquest sales.

Oh, yeah, GM and Cryslie should just go to C7. They only account for 30% of the market, and that market has just shrunk by 30%. Perfect fit.

Just wished that Chrysler made something worth while now so we could build on it.

You may be right. I don’t agree that Chrylser is too far gone (on it’s own, yes, with government help and an alliance with FIAT and/or Renault/Nissan, no). But my point is 1.) that you can’t save GM by ditching Chrysler and 2.) that if you were picking one based on the least government effort and money to make viable again you would pick Chrysler, not GM. The loss of GM and the market share pickup by Ford and Chrysler would sustain them for a few years at least. For Ford it might be indefinately, at least till the next Nasser screws it up again.

3 false notions based in fantasy:
Killing Chrysler will save GM.
Merging Chrysler with GM is a good idea.
The 300 is based off the old E Class platform :-).

Better to let both of the mortally wounded go / toss them out of the boat and hope that the one remaining (Ford) can recuperate, even if it has to share 1/2 of the extra “food” now available, with the folks in the “next” lifeboat (transplants).

In plain English; survival of the fittest makes for a stronger gene-base for the next generation. Cruel as it sounds, that’s how nature works, too.

This is pretty much what Henry Ford (the first) said in regards to a recession after World War I. Let ALL of the car companies fail, including his own, and let his fortune go too….. he’d pick up sticks, start over and do it all again.

Certainly, he was not alone in this optimistic attitude. The founder of General Motors himself, one William Crapo Durant, was kicked out of GM by banksters (he himself was a wall street wheeler-dealer so don’t feel too sorry for him), went and started Chevrolet Motor Company which he wheeled and dealed into a forced merger with GM (thereby taking over GM again), was kicked out by the duPont family and banking interests later, started Durant motors (which might have still been with us but for the depression).

Pretty much sums it up.

“On the battlefield, they practice triage for the wounded. Some will die no matter what the medics do so they are allowed to die. Some will live without further attention and some will live only if timely aide is provided.

It seems to me that Chrysler is in the first triade.”

Actually it works this way: You have two patients. One is wounded and needs a little blood transfusion ($) and you can send him to stay with his European relative (FIAT) to recuperate. This is Chrysler. The other is more gravely wounded (8 trumatized divsions instead of three), and needs massive amounts of blood ($) to make it. And they have no relatives to help them in recovery. As a matter of fact they pissed off the same guy (FIAT) that’s going to help the first patient. This is GM. So what’cha gonna do?

It is far easier to save Chrysler than GM. It costs less money. It’s easier to manage and track the process. The business is easier to turn around than the stumbling giant that GM is. GM is like that fat guy that is having all kinds of medical problems because of his obesity. Do you really want to spend big buck$ on making him healthy again, when the chances are he will still be in trouble just a few years down the road?

For those of you who subscribe to the “Let’s sacrifice Chrysler so that GM will live”: It won’t so any good. Even if Chrysler’s market share was split evenly between GM and Ford, IT WILL NOT SAVE GM. And you know what? It won’t split evenly. Ford will get more and the transplants will get some. GM will get a little bump.

Here is a better idea: Sacrifice GM. It’s so big that there will be plenty of market share for Ford and Chrysler. They will both be viable companies – even if half of GM’s market share goes to the transplants and the other half is split between Ford and Chrysler.

Here’s another way of looking at it. You have three guys on a lifeboat. A skinny kid (Chrylser) a medium built man (Ford), and a big assed fat slob (GM). You have a very limited amount of food and water. You have to choose one to toss in the drink. Who do you throw overboard?

Renault in France was nationalized for even longer.

As for which Japanese auto makers will survive, I think the same – Toyota (which includes part-ownership of Daihatsu, Hino truck, Subaru now that GM sold their stake, obviously Lexus and Scion), Honda (which also sell Acura), but add on to the list Suzuki (top-seller IN Japan, top-seller also in the huge and growing Indian market, good market in China and elsewhere in the world, and still with a presence in North America as well as a part-owned Canadian factory, useful in case the NAFTA trade doors to the outside world slam shut/close partially).

Not sure about Mazda.

Not sure about Mitsubishi.

Not sure about Nissan.

Perhaps a Suzuki-Mitsubishi combo could help survivability, or maybe even adding in Mazda. Doubt Nissan will merge, they already have a big French partner in Renault. They’ll either sink, or swim.

Suzuki-Mitsubishi makes a lot of sense; sell all vehicles as Suzuki (which means one name for all vehicles and marine motors, a la Honda) and merge the Suzuki and Mitsubishi dealerships.

For the US, that’d potentially mean a full vehicle line-up something like this:

MiEv electric car (ex-Mitsu) by 2010-2011
Swift sub-compact (perhaps built in Illinois)
SX4 compact crossover and sedan
Colt Plus Hybrid (my idea) – to compete with Insight/Prius – the basic car is already in production, and Mitsubishi own 50% of a big battery mfr….
Lancer compact (perhaps built in Illinois)
Lancer Evolution (Evo) sports compact
Grandis tall station wagon (ex-Mitsu) (these are getting to be quite popular, and it’s already in place, available with VW turbo-diesel, too)
Kizashi mid-sized (replacing the Galant)
Grand Vitara compact SUV
Outlander compact SUV (perhaps built in Illinois)
XL7 SUV (Canada) (perhaps replaced with a Kizashi-based crossover?)
Equator pickups (Nissan-produced in the US)

I suspect the Eclipse and Eclipse Spyder would have to go away, but could potentially survive if there was a sufficient business case for keeping them (but, probably not – Hyundai and Kia will be bringing coupe’s into the US at a sharper price-point)

The only overlap would be the Grand Vitara and Outlander, both of which are decent vehicles and both of which have some following.

And the ad for the “Pelosi” could be a remake of the Robocop Pacer ad from Speed Channel’s predecessor, Speedvision, where the maniac cop takes the keys away from every Pacer on the road.

Now I think that 200 billions won’t be enough. Whatever margin there ever was in building cars has gone out the window, at the exact time that consumers won’t accept a price hike in order for car companies to fix the bottom line.
Years, a lot of years, before GM is for real out of the red. And until then, consider Project Rescue GM about as smart as building a tunnel under the Atlantic. Yes, a sinkhole.

(And consumers aren’t dumb. They’ll figure out that the cars already on the road will be a lot better than the stripped down stuff the car makers will be putting on the roads in order to make money. Which is why aftermarket is starting to look good, with prices ticking up. This, of course, compounds the car makers’ troubles.)

I think that their time is very close to up. Not even enough left for a tag sale.

Thanks. Downhill run for a while then eh?

Exxon today is the combination of Standard Oil NJ (which was using the Exxon name) and Mobil Oil (which itself was formerly Standard Oil NY). Its market cap of $360 billion far exceeds that of GM now.

Now, it’s George Bush redux.

I hope the idiot-voter’s DC Mafia funds GM until they release the Pontiac Pelosi 5000 GTS turbo with the Teddy Kennedy RiverGuard(TM) option.

Being picky I know, but “the world’s most profitable company”? Hasn’t that title always been held by Exxon?