American Leyland Birth Watch 3: It Lives!
Today’s been rather hectic, in a Swedish go-fish kind of way. I caught sight of this Bloomberg report on a possibile Chrysler-GM shotgun marriage this morning. And, somehow, it’s still there. “Chrysler LLC may be sending a message to President Barack Obama’s autos task force by saying the ‘best option’ for survival is a merger with General Motors Corp. that both sides have labeled dead.” ChryCo spinmeister insists that Bloomberg’s got it wrong: “We are in exclusive talks with Fiat.” Now that the supposed deal with Nissan is dead. And the one with Chery. And the previous talks with GM. Speaking of which, The General’s aide de camp, PR spinmeister Steve Harris, also ruled out an Alliance—I mean, alliance. Yes, well, JR didn’t want to marry Cally either. (You could say this doesn’t bode well for either automaker.) Now, some scary stuff . . .
A merger would yield savings by melding purchasing, product development, distribution and technology investments, while merging the automakers’ finance units would help Chrysler dealers and customers, because GM’s part-owned GMAC LLC is now a bank-holding company able to accept and insure deposits, Chrysler said.
When I wake up, will Bobby Ewing be in my shower?
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Regarding "American Leyland"; merging the failed companies is unthinkably bad (they all have too many brands, to many dealers and too many union employees, merging just multiplies those problems). But even keeping the companies on government welfare as separate entities will cause them to fall apart and eventually fail, just like British Leyland. Anyone that doubts the British Leyland analogy only needs to look at GM laying off designers and engineers, canceling programs and attempting to sell off its position in China. All while keeping legally protected outside of bankruptcy, but worthless to the company, union employees and brands. toxicroach: Ditto. Chrysler is not a going concern, it is a horrible company that should be liquidated. That liquidation would cost Cerberus nothing but reputation, but hey, as long as the taxpayers are willing to foot the bill Cerberus might as well avoid the embarrassment of having the company that it bankrupted go bankrupt on its watch. GM is one thing, but if the government doesn't have the nerve to let Chrysler go Chapter 7 then there is really no hope. I may have to move to Sweden, where people still believe in the market and the rule of law. Actually, the House is up for election in less than two years, so I won't. Americans, including me, will find some politicians that have some nerve. The company extorting dealers and UAW are on notice. In two years game over. GM and Ford will survive. You won't.
From Canada--This is where the bailout money is going. "What you forgot to mention is, GM Oshawa has 2,400 employees that signed up for a similar buyout and most of them won't be taking it ‘till late this year and early next. “The total for these outrageous 4,000 buyouts (at $100,000 cash, $35,000 car coupon, 26 year seniority gets 30 year pension) is $2.5 billion dollars which has YET TO BE PAID." http://communities.canada.com/windsorstar/blogs/vanderblogger/default.aspx
Would not a merger cost tens of thousands of [s]democrat votes[/s] union jobs? How could the administration go for that? Besides, today they are going to nationalize the banks "at least for a short time," per Chris Dodd (D) Senate Banking Committee Chairman and most favoured client of CountryWide Mortgage. Nah. They'll keep those [s]democrat votes[/s] union jobs in place.