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Well, that all might be true but someone at Chrysler must have agreed to the merger, right? I mean, it wasn't a hostile takeover.

So at the time both companies must have thought, that it was a good idea. It's not exactly fair play, when ex-managers write books later, that they knew it would all go wrong anyway. In the end, I think, the true reason for the failure was a clash of different company cultures.
See but the quote you posted kinda tells me that it was Daimler that fucked up. They attempted to push their culture on Chrysler, which was clearly a mistake.
 
That'd mean Chrysler employees weren't good at following orders... ;)
 
That'd mean Chrysler employees weren't good at following orders... ;)
It could also mean that Chrysler employees had a good way of doing things that they were told to change for no reason whatsoever by people who had 0 understanding of the business.
 
For all its faults AMC was one of the best run American auto companies of the '80s. They had no cash so they had a slim and effective operation. The biggest benefit Chrysler obtained when they bought them was that management.

What remained of that left after Daimler took over. They did to Chrysler what they did to themselves. Cut corners/price/quality. Chrysler went from class leading interiors to pure garbage.
 
See but the quote you posted kinda tells me that it was Daimler that fucked up. They attempted to push their culture on Chrysler, which was clearly a mistake.

I never said that no mistake was made. Of course that merger was a mistake from the very beginning. Also I think I made clear I have never been a fan of J?rgen Schrempp, too.

Only I'm the kind of person, who strongly believes that disaster is almost never only one side's fault. More than one factor has to come into play to wreak so much havoc. And I strongly disagree with the insinuation by some, that Chrysler would have been the only Amerian car maker uneffected by the crisis in 2009, if only that bloody merger wouldn't have happened.

I admit, that I didn't spend as much time analysing the whole merger failure, as some may have done. So I cannot compete with detailed argumentation. I only object to the notion of Mercedes being the "evil destroyer of an American icon".
 
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I never said that no mistake was made. Of course that merger was a mistake from the very beginning. Also I think I made clear I have never been a fan of J?rgen Schrempp, too.

Only I'm the kind of person, who strongly believes that disaster is almost never only one side's fault. More than one factor has to come into play to wreak so much havoc. And I strongly disagree with the insinuation by some, that Chrysler would have been the only Amerian car maker uneffected by the crisis in 2009, if only that bloody merger wouldn't have happened.

Unaffected? No. Going down in flames like GM? No. The Chrysler lean management system would have been quite effective at riding out the 'storm' that was coming. Note that Ford managed to obtain success by adopting a very similar model at Mulally's command. The unprecedented labor/management cooperation that Chrysler had and that Mercedes completely threw away within a few years of the merger would also have enabled Chrysler to stay afloat. Chrysler's pre-merger business model and strategies are the subject of many business school case studies on how to do it right and build a resilient, responsive company.

The end result might not have been all smiles and roses and running all the way to the bank with profits, but they probably wouldn't have been at the table asking for bailouts, either. In 1997, they already had most of the tools and concepts that Mulally would introduce at Ford a decade later that proved so singularly effective - and they didn't have the ballast of failing or inconsistently profitable foreign auto makers to tie them down (Volvo, Jaguar, Aston, etc) having already decided it was a bad idea.

I admit, that I didn't spend as much time analysing the whole merger failure, as some may have done. So I cannot compete with detailed argumentation. I only object to the notion of Mercedes being the "evil destroyer of an American icon".

You can object all you want, but that does not change the demonstrable facts that it was Mercedes' incompetence, bumbling, arrogance, provincialism, micromanagement and incomprehension of the US market that caused Chrysler's failure.
 
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And I strongly disagree with the insinuation by some, that Chrysler would have been the only Amerian car maker uneffected by the crisis in 2009, if only that bloody merger wouldn't have happened.
I doubt anyone is arguing that but they might have ended up in the same position as Ford.
 
I doubt anyone is arguing that but they might have ended up in the same position as Ford.

Exactly so - though having a head start, they probably would have been better off than Ford. Ford's product dev cycle is still longer than pre-merger Chrysler's, for example.
 
Ok, so we have established, that everyone here thought it was a bad idea to merge Chrysler and Mercedes and predicted a big failure back then.

But somebody on Chrysler's side must have thought it was a good idea. What were their reasons? Where have those people gone and why don't you blame them today? I'm honestly interested in that answer.
 
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Ok, so we have established, that everyone here thought it was a bad idea to merge Chrysler and Mercedes and predicted a big failure back then.

But somebody on Chrysler's side must have thought it was a good idea. What were their reasons? Where have those people gone and why don't you blame them today? I'm honestly interested in that answer.

Most of them retired or have been booted out of the industry. Bob Eaton has not been able to find another job in the industry since he screwed the pooch by the numbers on this.

It was mostly the board of directors and the institutional shareholders, and they were looking at their stock holdings - the amount offered was much more than the then-current open market price per share.

The problem wasn't the sale of Chrysler per se. The problem was the new owners, Mercedes, then went through and got rid of everything that made Chrysler the most profitable automaker in the world prior to the merger.

Edit: I would also note this ABC News Report:

From the beginning, the high command in Stuttgart issued orders to Detroit about everything from where the headquarters would be located (Germany) to what kind of business cards would be used.

The relationship began to fall apart quickly. Since the merger, the company has lost nearly half its value. Somebody had to go, and it was the Americans. Daimler eventually sent in a German management team.

Schremp's promise of a "merger of equals" had been fiction, and he even admits as much. He told the Financial Times that if he had been honest with the Americans about German dominance before the merger, they never would have made a deal.

So what was the reaction at Chrysler?

"One of people who'd been deceived," says Meyers. "People who'd been hoodwinked. This wasn't just a small, a small decision. This was just plain dishonest."

The two cultures had never been compatible. Take the Daimler annual meeting, where stockholders are fed sausages and dumplings. In Germany, there's more attention paid to wining and dining the shareholders than to giving them precise information.

That's the reason Kirk Kerkorian, Chrysler's largest shareholder, sued Daimler for $9 billion, charging fraud.

"Apparently in Germany, one can say pretty much whatever one wants to the shareholders of a company," says Terry Christensen, Kerkorian's lawyer. "Here in the United States, what you say to the shareholders has to be true."

In other words, Mercedes told people what they wanted to hear, lied whenever they wanted to, and then did as they pleased with no regard for the consequences. The board and shareholders were partially at fault for placing short term gains ahead of long term returns, but they can also be partially excused because Mercedes lied to them.

Since then, there has been a growing movement to encourage or even mandate 'due diligence' on the part of the potential purchasee, and to make such promises contractual items with nasty penalties - specifically because of Mercedes' conduct.
 
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