David Cole at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) says that there is going to be another round of mergers in the auto industry. That's not difficult to swallow, with execs at smaller companies like Renault's Carlos Ghosn having been on the hunt for good alliances for years. Even German nemeses BMW and Mercedes have been mooting the idea of working together on small engines, which doesn't sound so crazy today, but a few years ago would have had their respective fans in apoplexy.
It's Cole's suggestion that "
the one company that matches up well with Volkswagen is Chrysler," that arches the eyebrow. VW knows it needs to make some moves regarding its US operations if it's to have any hope of achieving its sales objectives here or globally (it wants to be Toyota-big in the near future). That could include building a factory in the US, which the company will soon decide on, or... merging with Chrysler? Or should that be, "merging" with Chrysler?
Either way, we find that scenario highly dubious. We can't imagine VW would want anything to do with a freshly-divorced Chrysler. And we're pretty confident that the words "merge" and "merger" are 4-letter words at Chrysler for a spell. No one at VW is even hinting about anything of the kind, and the article doesn't reference anyone from Chrysler, nor does it mention Cerberus. Nor does it address the fact that VW probably won't be free to make its own decisions for too much longer without asking daddy Porsche. Although -- if Cerberus were to get Chrysler in fighting shape for sale to a carmaker that needed a turnkey solution to the US market...
[Source: The Car Connection]
