Chinese Vehicles
Would a Chinese vehicle have quality on par with the U.S. vehicle? And what would the implications be both from a quality and perception if one of the former Big Three were purchased by a Chinese co...
Forum Discussion
SidecarFlip wrote:
Dodge-Chrysler was purchased by Daimler MB for one reason and one reason only, Diamler MB wanted to cash in on the huge pile of money that was accumulated in their retirement accounts and thats exactly what they did, they bled Chrysler dry and then along came Marchoni, looking for an domestic outlet for his Fiat cars and bought Chrysler from Diamler MB.
Marchoni got the scraps. Fiat has rejuventated the company and returned it to profitability and now some Chinese company is making an offer. I find that scary. I believe that most people don't know it but the Chinese already own a large portion of GM and have for some time.
The Chinese and the British own parts of or outright, many business that are based here. Not much left here that is domestically owned today.
So much of that is wrong. For years Daimler Chrysler was a losing operation mostly because of Chrysler. Chrysler almost bled Daimler dry. Chrysler's benefits and pension obligations were almost $50 billion and it could've possibly doubled. This severely impacted profitability. Daimler originally paid $36 billion to merge with Chrysler. Almost 10 years later they only received $7 billion and actually paid millions just so that they could unload the company onto Cerberus.
Cerberus in turn lost their shirts on the deal. It was so bad that they actually demanded that Daimler give them their money back. During the whole bankruptcy / bailout they paid out billions and gave up their stake to the government.
Fiat picked up the new Chrysler not to save Chrysler, but to save itself. Fiat was in terrible shape in Europe, as it had been for the good part of a decade. The year before the merger was complete they were looking to take an almost $2 billion loss themselves. New Chrysler was becoming profitable and they desperately needed that money. Also they wanted the market presence Chrysler provided, Jeep since was selling well across the world, and RAM that was selling well in NA. If Fiat had not picked up Chrysler then they would've been out of business.
