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Automotive News & Views Chrysler Allies With Fiat
412 messages, Last post on Nov 09, 2009 at 7:02 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: nippononly (Jan 27, 2009 7:37 am) |
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Replying to: nippononly (Jan 27, 2009 7:16 am) Maybe partially true, and partially true that the safety standards are not exactly alike. One of the best things international organizations could do for the world is to have 1 set of standards, rather than having products redesigned for each market's environmental and safety specifications. Oh, Audi seems to have a fairly fast diesel. 
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Replying to: kernick (Jan 28, 2009 9:44 am) Not in the $15-25K small car segment. 
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Replying to: nippononly (Jan 28, 2009 10:00 am) Anyway back to Chryslers and Fiats. Despite the rhetoric coming from Chrysler, and depending on their definition of viable, I don't see Chrysler making any money in this economy. And Fiat like every other manufacturer is going to have a tough time surviving, so I really don't see who's going to have any money. I wouldn't be surprised that at the end of 2009 that 25% of the auto brands of the world were gone. What I see are a lot of desperate companies trying to put a smile on and tell a good yarn to either get someone to invest in them, or con some more government money to live a few more months. |
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Replying to: kernick (Jan 28, 2009 4:48 pm) I dunno about demise of that many brands. A few economists are starting to hint around that the economy may be bottomed in some sectors and existing home sales spiked because of the bargains out there. And money supply increased a small amount, so maybe credit will ease. Fiat isn't the only one still on the table apparently: "Press said Chrysler is in talks with other possible partners in case the U.S. Treasury Department rejects its proposed alliance with Italy's Fiat, the Detroit News reported. Indeed, there has been some debate about whether U.S. taxpayers should fund a U.S. company that is giving a 35 percent equity stake to a foreign automaker -- a stake that may well go higher -- with no cash changing hands. "If it doesn't work out with Fiat, we still have had other conversations with other potential partners and alliances and those obviously can continue, so we have other alternatives," Press said, according to the paper. "It's a little bit like dating: nobody knows who we're dating. We don't need the paparazzi to follow us around and put pressure on the dates" Chrysler's Press: On Sales, Incentives, Cash and Alliances
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Replying to: steve_ (Jan 28, 2009 6:47 pm) http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2009-01-28-imf-global-economy_N.htm Add to this that people like Greenspan, and any group of economists is in uncharted waters, and you'll get the picture that these guys are like the passenger who has to take the controls of the plane, because the pilot collapsed. They know they need to do something and that some combination of actions will work, but which, how much and when. Oh, it may be a little harder, because the crisis is global, there are actually a bunch of passengers working the controls.
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Replying to: kernick (Jan 29, 2009 6:46 am) |
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Replying to: kernick (Jan 29, 2009 6:46 am) Here's a rundown of possible models Fiat could bring to the US: Raiding the Fiat Cupboard (Edmunds Daily) 
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From today's Detroit Free Press... "Fuel-efficient minicars, subcompact and compact cars could begin rolling out of Chrysler plants by mid-2011 if the company's alliance with Fiat goes through, the Italian automaker's chief executive officer said Monday..." The question that's often raised these days is, how will Chrysler survive for the next 30 months? My solution would be to give Chrysler and the rest of the industry a temporary waiver on safety and emissions, so that vehicles that meet the European Union standards could be sold here. The justification would be that, (1) this is a highly unusual period for the economy and the auto industry; (2) we're not talking third world standards here, but those of a highly developed region of the world; and (3) the wiaver would be temporary. A valid counter argument is that we have productive overcapacity in the U.S. auto industry, and that we don't need Chrysler and Fiat in our market. The fact that Chrysler was recently bailed out with a government loan suggests that there's a sizeable constituency that would like Chrysler to survive in some form, if it can be viable. Most people are of the opinion that Chrysler's only hope for survival is to partner with another company. The counter arguments to this partnership have been well articulated in this discussion.
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Feb 03, 2009 9:02 am) Wouldn't the introduction of many models from Europe mean that the "market/pie would be divided up into more pieces". So every model that is currently being made and sold here, would then decrease, as these cars from Europe would steal their sales? So if Chrysler's plants are already slow, then the introduction of European cars decreases the sales of the existing brands. This then makes the financials of Chrysler worse, as their factories are producing less. Or Chrysler has to drop models, close factories and get rid of more U.S. workers then before the Fiats are sold.
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Automotive News & Views Chrysler Allies With Fiat
