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One way to look at this {which it seems no one...including the press... has) is that FCA is pulling a page from Ford's playbook of about a decade ago.

Back then Ford was selling off it's luxury brands (Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin) for anything they could get in order to raise money for their core brand, Ford. In this instance, Fiat is selling off what could arguably be their least important (to the bottom line) brand that has high name and image recognition. Big difference is that Ford had their back against the wall, and FCA simply wants to pay off some debts.

One thing you have to remember when trying to guess Marchionne's moves is that you won't always realize what he was doing till the end, and then you're stunned at how clever he was. General Motors has armies of high paid and top drawer corporate lawyers, and individuals that know the car business inside and out just as easily as we drink water. Yet that didn't keep GM from co-developing a platform with Fiat, then not only losing the rights to hat platform, but also losing the passenger car diesel engine GM developed plus billions of dollars in cash Fiat got from GM for essentially breaking up..... Almost as impressive is how when he added Chrysler to Planet Fiat, how Chrysler V6 engines (admittedly heavily modified) and LX platform parts, electronics, and computers wound up in Maseratis without anyone knowing or caring.

While we ca only guess and speculate about his motives with Ferrari, I suspect we won't see the real purpose and results of this play till well after it's over.
 
This is beginning of the end for FCA. When the empire crumbles hopefully the Jeep brand becomes American again.
1. Beginning of the end because they're selling off Ferrari? What drugs are you on?? Chrysler's been making ever increasing profits since the end of 2009....and FCA is now one of the largest car companies on the planet Earth.
2. Every time someone brings up the nonsense of Chrysler not being American because it's part of Fiat, I like to bring up these facts:

a) The person must have just crawled from a long slumber underneath a rock or deep inside a cave because Chrysler was owned by Daimler (a German company) since the late 90s, which puts it at something like 15 years or so ago by my count.

b) Cerberus, the American equity firm that briefly owned Chrysler bought it with the intention of gutting it. Daimler not only gave the company away to them, Daimler also gave them money to fund products that were in the pipeline (which included a redesigned 300 and Charger). Cerberus pocketed the money, got cheap on the quality of parts and fit and finish, and starting day one of their ownership shopping Chrysler (read: Jeep and Ram) around to other companies......BTW: Fiat finally paid to get the Charger and 300 out of the pipeline (Believe it or not, Bob Nardelli showed some members of the press the mockups of the redesigned Charger and 300 back in 2007 that was supposed to be 2009MY cars....They killed it...Fiat got them out in 2011)

c) If they have an issue with Fiat, then perhaps they should remember (we Americans seem to have attention spans and memories as short as goldfish) that Chrysler was headed for bankruptcy.

d) Being that we were in the midst of a huge recession, and a massive credit freeze, the only people on the planet that was in the position to buy any company or any component of one was the Chinese. Fiat turned Chrysler around and made it profitable......the alternative would have been "Ram and Jeep.....owned by China".

e) Finally, keep in mind that it was the American CEO of Chrysler, Bob Eaton, who singlehandedly destroyed Chrysler's future in the first place. What idiotic, stupid, incompetent, bonehead would be such a sorry*ss that he would be able to take a company that had strong sustained sales and income, billions in the bank, had more than enough to actually buy DaimlerBenz if they wanted to, yet went into an agreement that Daimler drained Chrysler's entire cash reserves and killed any product in the pipeline that wasn't too far along to stop, and the money went towards creating Smart, expanding MB's lineup, giving Daimler employees from the CEO to the Mercedes Benz factory worker bonuses (Chrysler workers got layoffs and nothing more)....meanwhile, CEO Eaton departed with a golden parachute worth $24 million and perhaps twice that much in DaimlerChrysler stock options before the ink was dry on the paper (about 2 weeks if I remember)............ I'll take Sergio Marchionne over Chrysler's last 2 "American" CEOs...and so would the hundreds of thousands of people whose live and home depend directly or indirectly on Chrysler's well being.

There is always going to be a never ending line of those who don't think things through who'll have a comment or opinion of Fiat running Chrysler that is neither based on reality, facts, or with consideration of the alternatives.........fortunately, they aren't actually running the company.
 
I'll make it real simple for you. FCA is running out of cash because Fiat is a failed company. FCA is using the money earned from selling Jeeps and RAM trucks to prop up Fiat, but Fiat is hemorrhaging money so badly that all the RAM trucks and Jeep in the world won't save them so they have to play their final card and that is Ferrari. The world will be better off without Fiat. The American workers at Chrysler will be better off not having to prop up Italian pensions and benefits. And Chrysler isn't anymore American than Toyota, it is an Italian car company and I'm sick of their imported from Detroit adds, they are disgusting.

1. Beginning of the end because they're selling off Ferrari? What drugs are you on?? Chrysler's been making ever increasing profits since the end of 2009....and FCA is now one of the largest car companies on the planet Earth.
2. Every time someone brings up the nonsense of Chrysler not being American because it's part of Fiat, I like to bring up these facts:

a) The person must have just crawled from a long slumber underneath a rock or deep inside a cave because Chrysler was owned by Daimler (a German company) since the late 90s, which puts it at something like 15 years or so ago by my count.

b) Cerberus, the American equity firm that briefly owned Chrysler bought it with the intention of gutting it. Daimler not only gave the company away to them, Daimler also gave them money to fund products that were in the pipeline (which included a redesigned 300 and Charger). Cerberus pocketed the money, got cheap on the quality of parts and fit and finish, and starting day one of their ownership shopping Chrysler (read: Jeep and Ram) around to other companies......BTW: Fiat finally paid to get the Charger and 300 out of the pipeline (Believe it or not, Bob Nardelli showed some members of the press the mockups of the redesigned Charger and 300 back in 2007 that was supposed to be 2009MY cars....They killed it...Fiat got them out in 2011)

c) If they have an issue with Fiat, then perhaps they should remember (we Americans seem to have attention spans and memories as short as goldfish) that Chrysler was headed for bankruptcy.

d) Being that we were in the midst of a huge recession, and a massive credit freeze, the only people on the planet that was in the position to buy any company or any component of one was the Chinese. Fiat turned Chrysler around and made it profitable......the alternative would have been "Ram and Jeep.....owned by China".

e) Finally, keep in mind that it was the American CEO of Chrysler, Bob Eaton, who singlehandedly destroyed Chrysler's future in the first place. What idiotic, stupid, incompetent, bonehead would be such a sorry*ss that he would be able to take a company that had strong sustained sales and income, billions in the bank, had more than enough to actually buy DaimlerBenz if they wanted to, yet went into an agreement that Daimler drained Chrysler's entire cash reserves and killed any product in the pipeline that wasn't too far along to stop, and the money went towards creating Smart, expanding MB's lineup, giving Daimler employees from the CEO to the Mercedes Benz factory worker bonuses (Chrysler workers got layoffs and nothing more)....meanwhile, CEO Eaton departed with a golden parachute worth $24 million and perhaps twice that much in DaimlerChrysler stock options before the ink was dry on the paper (about 2 weeks if I remember)............ I'll take Sergio Marchionne over Chrysler's last 2 "American" CEOs...and so would the hundreds of thousands of people whose live and home depend directly or indirectly on Chrysler's well being.

There is always going to be a never ending line of those who don't think things through who'll have a comment or opinion of Fiat running Chrysler that is neither based on reality, facts, or with consideration of the alternatives.........fortunately, they aren't actually running the company.
 
This is entirely consistent with Sergio's ongoing strategic moves...he starts out with the worst car company in Europe (FIAT) that is a complete dog devouring cash and he's not been able to fix that. He is gifted Chrysler in the wake of its bankruptcy during the financial crisis and uses Chrysler's cash flow to keep FIAT afloat. Even with that gift although he has been smart enough to not mess with Chrysler's products he has also done nothing to improve FIAT organically and he is spending beyond Chrysler's ability to keep the whole ship afloat. So he ousts the head of Ferrari and a few weeks later begins the process of milking the Ferrari cash cow to stretch the game out a little longer. This will not end well for any part of FCA.
 
This is entirely consistent with Sergio's ongoing strategic moves...he starts out with the worst car company in Europe (FIAT) that is a complete dog devouring cash and he's not been able to fix that. He is gifted Chrysler in the wake of its bankruptcy during the financial crisis and uses Chrysler's cash flow to keep FIAT afloat. Even with that gift although he has been smart enough to not mess with Chrysler's products he has also done nothing to improve FIAT organically and he is spending beyond Chrysler's ability to keep the whole ship afloat. So he ousts the head of Ferrari and a few weeks later begins the process of milking the Ferrari cash cow to stretch the game out a little longer. This will not end well for any part of FCA.
Um. I was trying to type the same damn thing. You hit it on the head. Get your cash up-front, suppliers!
 
Ferrari is a company that can Survive on its own.... FACT.

In years to Come, Maserati will be pulling more Profits than Ferrari with the Dodge/Alfa RWD platform (Giorgio) that would/could underpin the New Gran Turismo, and Alferi. same goes for Alfa Romeo when they launch they line up of cars based on the same platform. its all about platform sharing, which they cant do with Ferrari. but to afford to start this project (and others) they have to get rid of one (and a half=Lancia), and thats Ferrari.. The only thing Fiat needs and still could be able to use from Ferrari is they motors (V8's), Ferrari is also gaining new Turbo 6's based on Chryslers Pentastar v6
 
Ferrari is a company that can Survive on its own.... FACT.

In years to Come, Maserati will be pulling more Profits than Ferrari with the Dodge/Alfa RWD platform (Giorgio) that would/could underpin the New Gran Turismo, and Alferi. same goes for Alfa Romeo when they launch they line up of cars based on the same platform. its all about platform sharing, which they cant do with Ferrari. but to afford to start this project (and others) they have to get rid of one (and a half=Lancia), and thats Ferrari.. The only thing Fiat needs and still could be able to use from Ferrari is they motors (V8's), Ferrari is also gaining new Turbo 6's based on Chryslers Pentastar v6
If you buy into Sergio's pipe dream to turn Alfa into a global volume brand I have a lovely bridge in NYC that I'd like to sell you!
 
Almost too hard to imagine. After stating for months now that this wasn't on the table, they've now decided to do so. Piro Ferrari has a 10% stake in the company as part of the agreement when Ferrari was taken over by Fiat. I'm sure this will dilute his shares and potentially kill any association between the marque and it's founding family.

More importantly though, I wonder if this will make Ferrari a potential (but unlikely) takeover target? The article states that FCA will sell "10 percent of the sports-car unit’s shares and giving the rest of its 90 percent stake to its own shareholders." If that's the case then Exor (the Agnelli family controlled investment company) will control a significant stake as they are FCA's largest shareholder. That alone is likely to keep takeover candidates at bay, but you never know ---- Especially with Ferdinand Piech always lurking around.

Of course, if I were the Agnelli's and were looking for a way to spread out development costs of a newly "independent" Ferrari, I'd make an offer to the Italian investment company (Investindustrial) that currently owns a significant stake in Aston Martin. IMHO, that would be a very interesting luxury/sportscar group to see.
That would be an interesting auto group and one that could spread costs while retaining the "integrity" of the brand. Think the engines would remain exclusive but can see sharing elsewhere to create new products for new markets for both brands.
 
This actually makes perfect sense. FCA is in the midst of cross consolidating vehicle platforms and technology between Chrysler and Fiat. With Ferrari being such a specialized automaker, they really have nothing to offer the other two car divisions.

FCA's thinking is most likely - “Why carry the extra car division that we really can’t fully utilize within the company”
Good Point

FCA has 1.5 Billion reasons to do this.
 
One question I'd have is whether this will end the idea of a Ferrari SUV, or bring it about quicker, in the way that Porsche is now a SUV maker that also, incidentally, builds sports cars.
 
Don't forget Sergio.


So far AFAIK absolutely no Ferrari SUVs.

From www.autonews.com

Ferrari spinoff's real winners are Agnelli clan


October 30, 2014 - 8:31 am ET

MILAN (Bloomberg) -- The real winners in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Ferrari spinoff are Chairman John Elkann and the Agnelli Italian industrial clan he represents, who will be the biggest shareholders of both companies.
...............................

more @ http://www.autonews.com/article/201...errari-spinoffs-real-winners-are-agnelli-clan
 
One less brand for Chrysler NA to carry.
Not that I dislike Ferrari but I don't see why Chrysler's US coffers should again be raided by a third group of "pirates" to service the egos of those trying to prop up European brands of dubious worth to Fiat, including its own brand. If these companies can't pay their way, why must Chrysler be saddled with their product cycle costs...

I can almost guarantee that Sergio will have a golden parachute packed to launch before the wheels fall off.
 
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