Hundreds of years of Contract Law, out the window. Unsecured lenders (UAW) coming to the front of the line in front of bond holders, reminiscent of Stalin giving the masses the land after "removing" the farmers. Mis-use of power by the executive branch, in a Nixonian Fashion, taken to a new level.
Obama owns this deal and IMHO the GM one as well when it happens.
I spoke to a "gnome" yesterday, a little background on Fiat.
They seem to have a reputation for getting into deals like, this, pay any price to get what they want, shut down what they don't and skedaddle. My guess is they want the dealerships, Jeep and maybe the Mini-Vans. Which will be a real interesting WWII power play replay as VW tries to become the No 1 automaker in the world. Why do I bring the Mini-Van into this? Chrysler makes VW's Mini-Van in Canada. It may be fun to watch Fiat and VW try to screw each other over....
Jeery Flint over at Forbes noted on the Frank Beckmann show that it will take Fiat 2 to 3 years to being the 500 here, here is why I agree with him. An article 6 months or a year ago in one of the Detroit papers noted that Ford's Mulally made a command decision when he came aboard to go to their Euro fuel efficient cars, and they had pictures of them all in the article. The 1st will be the Fiesta in the fall. Mulally came aboard Ford almost 2 years ago now, do the math, unless I am wrong, I come up with 33 months, and I will assume Ford is a finer tuned machine in terms of worldwide divisions. Fiat and Chyrsler have NO divisions or synergies, zero zip nada. In terms of corporate Culture and Engineering/Manufacturing Standards, Tools, and Practices, this is a marriage without any dating, they don't know each other, in fact, they may have very little in common. The car will have to be Federalized in emissions and safety from Euro Specs to American Specs and yes they are different. My guess is much redesign will need to occur unless they are absolutely $h!+ lucky and it passes crash test, or any other test without redesign.
So when the Obamaton's say they can bring the Fiat 500 here in a year, they are full of you know what IMHO....
And if they try to bring it to the front of the line in terms of Federal testing facility or some other type of special treatment, my guess is Competitors have an Anti-Trust lawsuit on their hands against the Obama-Adminstration, Freeper legal eagles, tell me if I am wrong here..... ,
That little car may be the piece of proverbial bling-bling millstone around his neck that brings down his administration in the next election cycle. At some point middle of the road Americans are going to be tear-@$$ paying billions to keep Chrysler afloat to get this sub-par shoe box for billions, when they could have purchased a Fiesta, Yaris etc. that are here (or will be soon) and they work.
Simple.
All they have to do is suspend all the applicable regulations.