The Big 3 in Cars Almost Certainly Not Becoming the Big 2

Cars and Drivers

Published: June 9, 2015 5:10 pm

Last Updated: June 10, 2015 7:16 am

Does Chrysler need to become owned by GM? Or what about owned by Ford? That is a question that is harder to answer than whether or not Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) or General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) would have any interest in owning Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU).

Rumors have been around that Chrysler’s management and Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne have been trying to enlist activists, hedge funds, and other shareholders to try to get General Motors to merger. All of the reports point to a deal that is possible, yet highly unlikely.

Ford would not likely seem any more willing than GM to enter merger talks — in fact, Ford’s interest would likely be far less. Chrysler’s history has been checkered. Ford did everything it could under Alan Mulally’s leadership to get its debt down to manageable levels before and during the recession. GM went belly up in a government mandated bankruptcy reorganization before coming back as a public company again.

History may not favor one of the Big Three deciding to make it a Big Two either. In the 1990s there was DaimlerChrysler, and now there is Fiat Chrysler.

As large as GM and Ford are, neither seems like there would be all that much more scale. maybe after years and years of integration a combined company might make savings on back-office operations and staff. Maybe they could save on a streamlined finance operation as well. Still, these savings would literally take years to enact.

GM’s CEO Mary Barra has no interest, seeing scale of its own inside GM already — despite noting that GM had been approached.

Does it really matter that GM’s share price has floundered since late in 2010? Almost definitely not. Unless Mary Barra gets a change of heart, it seems as though a GM-Chrysler integration would just have GM take its eyes off the ball all over again.

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The view of 24/7 Wall St. is that Chrysler is going to have to go it alone as it operates under Fiat — or they are going to need to find a different foreign buyer. How many large car companies can say that they could have had 3 different owners in about 20 years.

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