Chrysler At The Gates Of Hell by Jamie Lincoln Kitman

[Demeter]

The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-lincoln-kitman/chrysler-at-the-gates-of-_b_49638.html


Jamie Lincoln Kitman: Chrysler At The Gates Of Hell



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Your tweedier auto writers used to like to sit around bemoaning the idiocy of Wall Street and its single-minded focus on short-term results, to hell with the publicly-held car companies' long-term prospects -- as expressed, for instance, in quaint matters like a firm's commitment to engineering and manufacturing excellence or, heaven forfend, the well-being of its workforce. Now with the pending sale of Chrysler to the private-equity firm cum hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, we same industry scribes may soon find ourselves longing for the transparency, accountability and kindly benevolence of publicly held companies.

If there were ever an example of all that's wrong -- and all that's going to be wronger -- with American industry, it's to be found in the Chrysler saga.

Many will know Chrysler, then America's number three domestic auto maker, was swallowed in 1998 by Daimler-Benz at the behest of its swashbuckling former chairman, Juergen Schrempp, an erstwhile diesel mechanic (and, by all accounts, world-class megalomaniac,) for $36 billion. Fewer will recall that this so-called "merger of equals" immediately cost tens of thousands of workers their jobs and the Chrysler executives who remained most every scintilla of their authority. Soon afterwards, Chrysler's scrappy Plymouth division was given an ill-advised trapdoor, its sales volume lost forever. But such was the cost, the unsentimental Germans explained, of realizing the "synergies" of the two companies.

Ah, synergy. Nine years later, Cerberus has had to scare up just $6 billion to buy Chrysler, the market evidently concluding that Daimler's magic touch, in nine short, synergistic years, had caused Chrysler to shed an embarrassing 80% of its value. Capital is fickle, Apple iPhones are sexier, but, still, you gotta say, Nice work, herren!

Addressing his firm's $30 billion miscue, Daimler's current chairman and former Schrempp golden boy, Dieter Zetsche, shared a belated realization. "The American volume customer is not willing and is probably not able to pay premium prices for premium technologies."

"Well, excuse us!" perhaps we ought to have said. But, instead, the statement caused many who'd driven Chrysler's current model line to fall about laughing, as, aside from the firm's rather successful Chrysler 300 model, which shared some of its better pieces with Mercedes' E-Class, not a single Chrysler product boasts anything remotely approaching premium technology (nor, it should also be noted, are its prices "premium;" people don't buy the cars in spite of their low prices - they're that unimpressive.) Indeed, if anything, Daimler expanded and fortified Chrysler's already robust reputation for building crap automobiles, while the merger can also be credited for helping the German firm concomitantly crater its own 100-year-old name for unassailable quality....


KEEP ON READING--HE DISHES THE DIRT ON CERBERUS, DAN QUAYLE, AND THE GERMANS

[WinkyDink]

1. Yes, and that was also when Ferrari was embarrassing Mercedes in F1.

HUGE blunder, for Mercedes to buy Chrysler.

[bobthedrummer]

2. Kitman and anyone else that cares to learn a bit more about privatization can get a clue here at DU

for example-Cerberus was looked into when the Walter Reed outpatient scandal became public and I asked other DUers to collaborate our efforts in a parent thread that went off in many directions (but connected).

Here is that thread-it's valuable today just as much as when I started it on March 7, 2007 and I encourage everyone to take some time to review it and use whatever you find helpful in your own projects.

"International American Products Inc./IAP: A DU investigation thread"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x360539

leveymg used that parent thread with some of his own research and came up with this March 9, 2007 thread-again showing the breadth of the connected, and corrupted, dots within privatization

"Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story and US Attorney Firing"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x377023

The historic approach of analysis of privatization would include a lot of the information in this White Rose segment.

"The War Years: Part 5: Corporate Traitors"
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/waryearsp5.html

For those of US concerned about the increasing tensions between Russia and what used to be called the free world here is a cross-post from the IAP parent thread that is a synopsis of black budget networks and a profile of a little known private investor relations firm that has many clients located in places like PRC, Vietnam, Ukraine, Thailand- a company headed by a man that claims to have been a covert operative, a company called Hawk Associates, Inc.

"Historically the dark side of investment relations includes black budget relationships"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x360539#402023

Use the information in these links, share it and never give up.