[Tupelo]

I am going to disagree with most here, I think the Fiat buyout is the best that we could have hoped for. Mercedes Benz bought Chrysler back in the 90s and IMO raped the company for it's cash and intellectual properties. When Mercedes decided to dump Chrysler, there were no takers except the privately held holding company that owned Century 21 and a few others. Interestingly no automobile company wanted Chrysler, so all Chrysler did for the next few years was tread water. Then came the Bush/Obama Bailouts. Free money and a chance to unload Chrysler. We all know the rest. Now Fiat, an automobile company will own Chrysler and maybe just maybe the old name plate will survive, though I expect Dodge to go the way of Plymouth. In my opinion, the real villain in this story is Mercedes Benz with the UAW tagging along like the little toady in A Christmas Story.

[tcrlaf]

“In my opinion, the real villain in this story is Mercedes Benz”

I have some inside knowledge about that one.

Mercedes really only wanted the Jeep nameplate for Asia and Africa, and went so far as to produce Grand Cherokees in Austria, while the Malaysia deal for China imports went south.
(FIAT Just reached a deal to build Wranglers and Grand Cherokees in China with Guangzhou Automobile Group for 2014/15.)

The culture clashes between the Brass-n-Glass Palace in Auburn Hills, the Unions, and Stuttgart were HUGE, and they could never reconcile the American Manufacturing Method of “Good Enough”, with the German anal-retentive drive for quality over quantity.