AP sources say Chrysler to read from Chapter 11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/30/chrysler-bankruptcy-what-_n_193528.html

This is where I'd normally make fun of Chrysler by saying that in terms of build quality it was already bankrupt, but I'm going to avoid piling on today.

 

Freep says it too..

http://www.freep.com/article/20090430/BUSINESS01/90430008/Chrysler+will+file+for+bankruptcy

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will announce at noon today that it will
take Chrysler LLC into a historic bankruptcy to force a cut in debt key to a partnership with Fiat S.p.A. after three firms refused a sweetened offer.

With the UAW late Wednesday ratifying cost cuts in its contract and cuts in the money due its retiree health-care trust fund, President Barack Obama will announce a Chrysler-Fiat deal and the government’s “surgical” bankruptcy plan later today.

The administration "was willing to give the holdout creditors a final opportunity to do the right thing," an administration official said. But "the agreement of all other key stakeholders ensured that no hedge fund could have a veto over Chrysler's future success."

The lack of an agreement will not "impede the new opportunity Chrysler now has to restructure and emerge stronger going forward," the official said.

The administration has gone to great lengths to portray the first bankruptcy of one of Detroit’s major automakers as just a legal chore, rather than the threat to Chrysler’s existence and the entire U.S. auto industry that Chrysler itself had described less than three months ago.

 

RIP, Chrysler. Just waiting for somebody to sign the DNR order at this point.

 

So while car shopping, I go into the GM/Pontiac dealer and mention I heard rumors about Pontiac going bankrupt. They do a few days later. Yesterday, I walked around a Chrysler lot, they're announcing bankruptcy today. [/cue eerie music]

 

The seeds of their demise were sown with their product lineup of the last five years or so.
Caliber - Ugliest car I've seen since the Pontiac Aztek (and we know what happened to Pontiac)
300c - Nice, but a holdover from when Bob Lutz was running the show and getting long in the tooth.
Charger - See 300
Jeep Compass - THIS IS NOT A JEEP. It's a Caliber wearing a Jeep costume.
Jeep Patriot - Huh?
Jeep Commander - They built this to replace the original Cherokee? I guess the market for boxy utes needed to be satisfied.

Sebring - The sedan is the ugliest car I've seen in a while beside the Caliber and the Aztek. What is with all the ribs and the chrome? It looks like someone shrank and deformed a 300 and made it front-wheel drive. Who under the age of 50 would want to drive that thing?
Aspen/Durango - Big, heavy utes that look like total garbage and drive like it too.
Minivans - This looks like the box the Honda Odyssey came in. Uglier than homemade sin (whatever that is). But the craziest thing is how they slapped a Vee-dub badge on it and called it the Rutabaga. Very slick.

This is a big no-brainer. Who greenlit all of these idiotic cars? How did a design staff go from such work as the Viper and 300 to this dreck? I'm just surprised Chrysler didn't go into the tank sooner.

 

It's also a Caliber wearing a Jeep costume.

And I've never seen anybody driving a current Sebring sedan they actually bought. Strictly a rental in terms of actual use.

 

This doesn't mean Chrysler is dead.

It just means they get to flip the bird to people they owed money to, and they get to borrow from the government forever because no one else will lend to them.

 

Fiat is really going to help Chrysler with their reliability woes. The Fiat Spyder my grandfather had was a very reliable machine that only broke every other day in a good week.

This whole government takeover binge reminds me of what happened to the British auto industry. Government takes over. Runs industry into the ground. No more industry. The most chilling passage of the Wiki article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland

GM is already gone. Chrysler is on the way to becoming Fiat's U.S. branch. Unreliable cars that drive well and last two weeks. Wonderful. It's horrific that Jaguar and Land Rover are owned by Tata, a company based in a former possession of the once-great British Empire.

 

Is what? The suspense is killing me!

 

Save Jeep! Save Dodge trucks!

That's all I ask. Keep those two marques rolling.

 

I hope it doesn't last.