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From AutoEdizione:

Sergio Marchionne made a few remarkable – to say the least – statements yesterday. One of them was that the CEO is thinking about letting go of the brands Fiat and Chrysler in Europe and the US (not in Brazil and other emerging economies). The reason for which is that both brands are suffering from an image problem on these continents. This very strange ‘plan’ is, by the way, in line with the plans to expand the 500- and Panda-label. The fact that there are barely any Fiat-badges to be found on both the 500 as well as the Panda is a clear indication.

Read the whole thing here: "Marchionne possibly wants to replace car brands Fiat and Chrysler"

Could there possibly be any truth to this? If so, that's nothing short of insane! But it does bring to mind the claim by the alleged FGA insider (with a pro-VW stance) Busso D.O.H.C about a year ago that "[Marchionne] is convinced he cannot recover fiat image in Europe, but for a tiny part. Here's where the 500 family starts and develops as a quasi-independent brand."

And then there's issue of the Chrysler brand, about which the linked article above says "Marchionne would have said that it’d be best to look for a ‘new’ brand with a portfolio full of new products." (I don't understand from that sentence whether Marchionne said this or not, the way it's written it sounds like the article writer just assumes that Marchionne "would have" said it, but it doesn't really make sense just to assume that out of the blue without him actually having said it...)

 

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Apparently, the source is the following article: "Marchionne: addio marchio Fiat?". (AutoEdizione, unfortunately, has a bad habit of not providing the sources of the information they post.)

But yes, it does sound far-fetched, although I believe Marchionne is more than capable of making asinine brand or product decisions...