If your theory holds, Tata is next. After all, it did ingest [que drumroll] LAND-ROVER!

The fear of some was the displacement of live people as workers. Now the fear is elimination of whole companies.

It gives me pause to consider what other huge social shifts I may be missing now in ‘08.

Bah humbug. The redesigns stink because the managers who directed the projects were bad at their jobs, simple as that.

Walmart and Home Depot are notorious for this and I don’t see either headed for Chapter 11.

Think of Chrysler as a slum landlord who bought a building on the cheap awaiting a buyout offer and you begin to get the picture.

Last time I drove through Toledo, ten years ago, the smokestacks at the ancient Jeep plant still said O V E R L A N D on them:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Overland_chimneys_Toledo.jpg/250px-Overland_chimneys_Toledo.jpg

Appreciate the kind words th’other day, by the way…

By significantly cutting out an production and dealer infrastruture that needs to sell 2.5m cars a year that cannot be scaled back to 1m cars a year and get back to the basics and build a set core of vehicles – they will have an advantage versus GM / Ford which have much larger infrastructure that they can no longer afford to pay for b/c their market share and sales have dropped substantially.

As I have said before, my next car is going to be a Honda built right in my own home state of Indiana.

Hey, I’m a Hoosier too! Too bad the Fit isn’t made stateside, because that’s what we’re looking at as a replacement for our 180k-mile Saturn.

Bankruptcy = very yes.

Look for the three-headed dog to let loose “The Minivan Company” and Jeep. The rest will rot in Hades.

As I have said before, my next car is going to be a Honda built right in my own home state of Indiana.

Bear wasn’t boosted by Kramer, what he said was that it is ok to leave your money in their account, as you wouldn’t lose that. He didn’t say anything about the stock itself.

Chrysler has had several successes – just not able to competitively adapt to the market. The 300, PT Cruiser (when it wasn’t 8 years old), Ram to a degree, Wrangler, Caravan were good sellers and profitable.

They were all great cars, but they’re all past their prime with no replacements in sight. Their newest cars (Sebring, Avenger, Caliber, the latest minivans and the Jeep-etes) are just not competitive, so I can’t see how the company can continue selling vehicles profitably even if it didn’t have the burden of legacy costs.

Ch11 would be best for them as they are much smaller yet have big concerns and now with an owner that can squeeze blood from a turnip – they will restructure for efficiency.

Bear died because it was leveraged 35:1 and the underlying paper was pure excrement, worth pennies on the dollar, or less. My source is last week’s Economist; a twenty page overview of the ongoing crisis in banking. Bear was rated AAA the week before it’s implosion, was boosted by Kramer, and was bailed out to prevent a complete seizure of capital markets. Not enough rumors, the smart money, the institutional money bailed, screwing the little guy.

The big three need to be bailed out and protected for basic economic reasons. Under new management, of course. The United States requires a mixed economy in order to be healthy–think of it as a diversified portfolio. It’s time to stop relying on counterproductive economic ideology, and focus on what works, even if it involves borrowing techniques from China, France, or other zones whose practices wrinkle your collective noses, but whose performances run circles around your own.

In reality, American made vehicles are orders of magnitude better than the best of their Chinese badged counterparts. But absolutely nobody here thinks the US industry deserves to survive. Absolutely everyone here expects Chinese products to improve, cross the Pacific and compete here. The difference is protection, and coherent economic policy on the part of the Chinese. Under no circumstance will the Chinese leadership permit the wholesale destruction of their domestic industry.

A Chapter 11 shedding of UAW’s stranglehold on labor, franchise laws that prevent closing of slow selling stealerships, and then paying pennies on the dollar to settle debt and get a fresh start. If this happens and they create a quality product mix…the Chrysler that rises from the ashes will have a significant and unassailable advantage.

But Chrysler’s product line (Jeep largely aside) is rotten from top to bottom. Getting rid of the UAW and dealerships still leaves them with uncompetitive product which will take years to phase out (I doubt they have any kick-ass cars waiting in the wings to be green lit for production). Lousy vehicles got them into this mess, and chapter 11 isn’t going to fix that.

I don’t believe that for a minute. What possible benefit is there to Daimler from loosing billions on a failed merger? Chrysler customers and Daimler-Benz customers had about zero overlap before the deal, and killing Chrsyler does nothing to help the Benz side of things.

Which is not to say TTAC is handling it wrong.

Cerberus is just a vulture picking at the corpse and can’t really be blamed for doing what vultures do. Daimler’s management, though, might find itself in an uncomfortable position if accusations that Chrysler was delierately trainwrecked to the benefit of Benz are investigated by American authorities.

I could see this resulting in a Senate committee if things go truly pear-shaped.

What a waste.

Sometimes I wonder if Herr Borgward is up there laughing his hiney off at Daimler Benz.

See, there’s this undercurrent of rumor that D-B didn’t like Borgward stepping on their upmarket turf with his quite nice 2300 Grosser Limousine (big sedan) introduced in 1960, and the Swabians (i.e. Stuttgart folks / Daimler-Benz high honchos) fixed Borgward’s wagon by making sure the Bremen government officials killed off Borgward with a bunch of lies…

The Bremen state government declared Borgward insolvent (bankrupt) when in fact it really was not, and this led to death-by-heartbreak for Herr Borgward.

I hear Herr Borgward’s grandson is looking to start building a new car company in Germany.

(Kizmet / Karma?)

Just as Daimler-Benz finishes dining on Chrysler’s money and casts and eye around for a new dish…. yet nobody is stupid enough to be invited into the parlor by the spider this time?

They still get paid an hourly wage even though they aren’t at work?