Quote:
Originally Posted by spidge
Agreed. What's the point?
I can see keeping Jeep, and selling HUMMER, but having both Dodge AND Chevy around is pointless. It will just mean even more divisions for a company that should be working on reducing the number of divisions.
The Caliber and PT Cruiser are unnecessary with the HHR.
The Avenger and Sebring are unnecessary with the Malibu/Aura/G6.
They should use the LY platform for the STS and Lucerne, and the minivan platform, as another poster said.
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I think it goes farther than the products - which others have pointed out could not be combined this way for ~3 years or so. I don't think any dealership coverage issues could be addressed much sooner than this either.
The only benefit I can see is that two companies without vision or courage would have some (contractual) excuse to lose headcount and combine operations (purchasing, engineering, and manufacturing). During the transition however, they would both become less agile, and have some of their brightest minds working on the "assimilation".
Then again, both companies are masters of brand management through badge-engineering, and are fond of bi-yearly reorganizations - so maybe this is a match made in heaven:
There's way too much product overlap for this to make sense, but GM WOULD get a minivan and Chrysler COULD get slightly more global presence. The assimilation SHOULD leave them in a better state that continuing on alone and trying to beat the crap out of each other. Having extra management staff onhand could also free up the attention units needed to make sure that :
1)GM-Chrysler survives the next 6 months
2)small cars receive the funding they need
3)the merged but smaller company is more competitive.
It's sad how far Chrysler has fallen since its "merger of equals" with Daimler, while the 3-pointed star shines as brightly as ever. I'd say Chrysler got used and thrown away (especially since they're now on the verge of being owned by a Company with market cap <$5 billion).