Saab isn’t much better and is another marque in danger of disappearing. There is little left of the image Saab enjoyed from the seventies through the nineties. Their sale to GM diluted their identity into the maze of GM modeldom. When GM first put the Malibu nameplate on Saab’s bread and butter sedan they saved the Malibu and began evolving the Saab into a part of the Malibu line. Maybe back in Sweden a Scandinavian angel could rescue the Saab nameplate if the Swede’s care to retain ownership of any portion of their automobile industry.

Chrysler needs Hummer for the government to take them serious as a Military supplier, and they could use Saab to go upmarket.

Sounds crazy? Yeah, when I told people that gas was gonna crash around the time of the election and that Indiana was gonna go blue for the first time in 44 years, I got that look that I had 3 heads (no pun intended).

People said that common sense said that Gm was going to buy Chrysler, not the other way around. Haha, now I laugh in their face.

I am becoming more convinced that the “major announcement” was that GM had no desire to attempt any acquisition of Chrysler or anyone else. Their announcement indicated that the people at GM that are truly interested in the survival of GM and the American automobile industry knew there was nothing to gain and much to lose by buying Chrysler but instead on government support along with continued internal changes, which they will announce more about later.

It indicated that while there was a deal, it was being pushed by certain factions within GM enrich that stood to increase their personal fortunes (which were likely heavily invested into Cerberus).

The carefully worded statements regarding the GM “acquisition” of Chrysler were designed to make it clear to the concerned owners (stock holders) of GM that their management and BOD were not so uniformed as to the background mechanizations of Cerberus as one may think.

Cerberus constantly pounded the idea of a “merger” to help GM and the US auto industry weather the current economic storm into the heads of an unsympathetic (auto manufacturer-wise) America in order to cover their true desire to dump and run, destroying Chrysler and bleeding GM in the process. Of course this would just have been “collateral damage” to the dumping but probably necessary for Cerberus to come out ahead. There is big money in Cerberus, some of which own politicians who may be necessary to help GM survive. Ergo GM had to be very careful of whose toes they were about to step on.

Notice how fast things started to happen as soon as we all knew the Democrats were in charge and the Bush machine was truly out. No time was wasted in getting to the table with the movers and shakers of the Democratic party (last Thursday) followed the next one day by announcing GM’s commitment to preserving themselves along with Ford and maybe even Chrysler.