Zoomi Life

Chrysler officially declared bankruptcy last week amongst cries from various political parties and pundits over the whys and hows of the deal.  Despite billions in government bailouts and massive cutbacks by the company–even the restructuring of agreements with United Auto Workers and several of Chrysler’s debtors–the company could not avoid the inevitable.

While blame is being thrown at hedge fund managers and nameless “investment bankers,” the real blame should lie with the Bush and Obama administrations, the Congressmen who agreed to the bailouts, and most heavily with the massive failures of Chrysler’s management over the past decade or more.  Hedge fund managers whose interest lay in keeping your 401k and Roth IRA in the black are not to blame so much as the idiotic management decisions made by the Chrysler Corp’s leadership for the past decade.

Meanwhile, Fiat is poised to gain a controlling share of Chrysler and will likely do so once the bankruptcy clears. All with the blessing of the White House and (apparently) the American public.  Without commenting on the question of why billions of Treasury funds bailed out an American company so it can be bought up by a foreign interest, let’s look at Fiat themselves.

Optimistic green hounds are hoping to see several of Fiat’s models come to U.S. shores. There certainly are many highly efficient and strong options to choose from in that regard.  Fiat, once plagued with being “worse than the lowliest of Japanese imports,” has been busy for the past 20 years rebuilding its good name in Europe.  Mostly with good effect and success.

Fiat has gone from the days of vehicles who’s cheapness was only outweighed by their lack of reliability to becoming a company with a respected name in automotive excellence at fair value.  Their crowning achievement to make this change was the Panda: a sort of crossover compact SUV with great mileage and winning awards for reliability and versatility.

Then comes the extreme efficiency moguls of Fiat: the Fiat 500 and the Alfa Mito, both getting over 40mpg without hypermiling. Now comes the real question: will these cars make it in America?

I think they could have a chance.  After all, if the (in my opinion) stupid-looking new Beetle and the disappointingly lame BMW Mini can become popular in the States, why not the Potato Car (I mean 500)?

If Fiat is smart, they’ll continue the more popular lines of Chrysler vehicles like the PT Cruiser and the handful of hybrid models that were still doing well.  They’ll also continue forward with the much-anticipated Peapod and perhaps keep the Chrysler brand alive long enough to use its existing customer base to advantage.

However it works out, Fiat will have a tough sell ahead of them.  Americans are very unhappy (according to most polls) with the Chrysler and GM debacle that’s been going on.  The bad name that Fiat left behind when they pulled out of the U.S. the last time may also come forward to haunt them.

For my two cents, I plan to stick with my Toyota and Honda brands.  I stopped buying American cars a long time ago, ever since my Ford pickup nightmares in the 1990s.  I have to give Ford some credit, though, for refusing the bailouts and churning out some impressive press with their latest efficient models.  The company has the footing to hold out for quite a while, with one of the largest world-wide sales networks of any automaker.