Why would they sell profitable brands? All US brands make a profit. It's just an issue of lack of investment.

 

That's because Chrysler is paid for and Dodge doesn't exist (it's selling a rebadged ALFA). The profitability comes from Jeep and RAM. Which, no, they wouldn't dream of selling.

And if you trust Stellantis I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

 

We all know how this goes by now, right?
C/D is not for sale till the very minute the paperwork is signed with the buyer.

 

Yep, just like they were pursuing mergers until the mergers were announced.

 

I'm not sure what they would get out of a sale. One, neither would fetch much cash on the sale. Two, the buyer would have to have very deep pockets. Three, no US or Canadian plants to build them. Some have said if the Chinese buy them they'd just make them over there. Oh yeah, that would really make them sell. That's funny. And the Chrysler relative that wants someone to buy them? That'll sure work too. In the end, they either get resurrected, or they die on the Stellantis vine.

 

It could all be worked out. According to the “experts” FCA USA has too many plants. Selling one is more profitable than closing one.
Current designs, including engine and other components gets licensed to the new company until they get their development up and going.
It actually all could work out nicely except the biggest holdup - the financial backing to do this. I suppose a group of investors with a public stock offering would work but I still doubt they’d get enough funding.

 

Go Fund me page sponsored by Allpar.
That would give all the naysayers a stake in the new Company!

 

All the naysayers with a spare million.

 

So your view is that they should shut it all down and lose half the corporate profits?

 

Had they given the 300 half the love they gave Maserati, we probably wouldn’t be wondering if Chrysler had a future

 

There are "but" statements with regard to Treasury.

First, the statement above lumps together the Bush and Obama bailouts. Bush just gave them big bundles of cash and said "stay alive until President Obama takes charge." You can decide for yourself whether that was "don't die while I'm President" or "I don't want to hand Obama a massive crash." I prefer to think it was the second. Regardless, Bush didn't do anything to fix the problems, he just handed over a few billion dollars. If you just look at the second intervention, flawed though it was, you can see that Chrysler more than repaid its loans. The interest rates were steep.

Second, the government lost a bundle on GM because politicians and pundits kept harassing Obama over "government motors" and why did the government still have shares? The answer was that the administration was waiting for the stock price to rise to the point when the losses, if any, would be small. Eventually Obama gave up and sold the stock, after which it went up.

I do think (a) Chrysler could have worked on its own, or on more favorable terms, and (b) GM should never have been allowed to have that mediocre telecom fool running things and skimming huge amounts for himself and for useless board members. But overall, the amount of unemployment benefits that would have been paid out in the first month or so would have been bigger than the losses. Remember that the suppliers would have gone under, too, and that would have ended Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, etc. production in the South.

 

There are "but" statements with regard to Treasury.

First, the statement above lumps together the Bush and Obama bailouts. Bush just gave them big bundles of cash and said "stay alive until President Obama takes charge." You can decide for yourself whether that was "don't die while I'm President" or "I don't want to hand Obama a massive crash." I prefer to think it was the second. Regardless, Bush didn't do anything to fix the problems, he just handed over a few billion dollars. If you just look at the second intervention, flawed though it was, you can see that Chrysler more than repaid its loans. The interest rates were steep.

Second, the government lost a bundle on GM because politicians and pundits kept harassing Obama over "government motors" and why did the government still have shares? The answer was that the administration was waiting for the stock price to rise to the point when the losses, if any, would be small. Eventually Obama gave up and sold the stock, after which it went up.

I do think (a) Chrysler could have worked on its own, or on more favorable terms, and (b) GM should never have been allowed to have that mediocre telecom fool running things and skimming huge amounts for himself and for useless board members. But overall, the amount of unemployment benefits that would have been paid out in the first month or so would have been bigger than the losses. Remember that the suppliers would have gone under, too, and that would have ended Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, etc. production in the South.

Of course it lumps them together. They were loaned the whole amount under two presidents, they didn't pay it all back, so Fiat was paid to take Chrysler. That they paid back everything loaned under the second president is a political talking point.

 

Cherokee as it was would have made a much better Chrysler than a Jeep. But unfortunately the upper suits at FCA were unwilling to do that, or anything else for that matter (besides a minivan). Instead of giving new product to Chrysler and figuring out how to make it work, they folded and shoe-horned everything into the Jeep lineup.

 

The upper suits at FCA were convinced that every new SUV had to be a Jeep, because they had no clue about the US market, or the value of Chrysler and Dodge in it.

Non Daimler under FCA
200
Pacifica
Dart
Viper (also not a Fiat platform)
Wrangler/Gladiator JL(U)/T (also not a Fiat platform)
Renegade
Compass
Cherokee

Grand Cherokee/L is an FCA project that came out under STLA
(Grand) Wagoneer is an FCA project that came out under STLA

Hornet is an FCA project that came out under STLA, but that is about saving an Alfa, not about Dodge.

Dart/200 were improperly sized and the engines were not given direct injection and made to run on regular due to not understanding the US market and looking down on Chrysler and Dodge ('10 Giulietta got a DI 1.75T). Proper size would have been Dart 106" WB 70" wide, Avenger 110" WB 72" wide, 200 114" WB 74" wide ('13-'20 Fusion was 112" 73" wide). There may have been fear that a 110" Avenger and 114" 200 would have cut into V6 Challenger/Charger/300 sales, so 200 only got a 108" WB.

 

...nearly Ford...

 

But FIAT group was fine ie net debt free with a Ferrari, iveco, new holland etc in the kitty....why did it need to saved by us taxpayer when...

Gm had already er saved it by paying marchionne 2 billion to not buy fiat car business including diesels for opel etc. In 2006.

As i said: gm czarist bureaucratic management , and old uaw, were the villains of the whole 2008 saga, if villains there were. Not FIAT.

The n america business cashflow and some profitability but really ferrari ipo and exor and fca brazil enabled fca italy to, through stringency, tide over the eurozone debt crisis that hit southern europe later in 2013. Vw group recieved tons of state help, psa was bailedout then too: fca recieved no subsidies of any description from an italian govt with very, all too empty coffers (sovereign debt crisis, it was.)

Marchionne recieved nothing but usurious interest loans worth a mere 1.x billion $net net (as you pointed out, vs gm 's 9 billion)....when the extant and prospective liabilities of post bankruptcy chrysler were so huge.

Chrysler was re/imported from Detroit by .... Marchionne, eminem et al: it did not happen Of Its Own Glorious Accord. ;-)

 

Making up “facts” as always.
If Chrysler was such a bad deal, why did Sergio fall all over himself to take the deal? Hint: it’s a very similar reason to Daimler.

 

“Re-imported from Detroit”? Yeah, that didn’t last long as product was left to become extremely stale, and new product didn’t come to replace all of the models that were cut and not replaced. That’s sure some import business! (Sarcasm, off).

 

He did invest in Chrysler and Dodge from the very start. The Hellcat was done under Fiat. More importantly, the C-200 and Pacifica. Admittedly that was largely to prove that Fiat had something to bring to the table. Turns out it didn't