GM and Fiat <OT>
Jeffrey DeWitt
they WOULDN'T have to buy Fiat!
That is a LOT of money to spend to not buy something!
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/13/news/international/gm_fiat.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
Jeff DeWitt
Jeff Rice
(Fiat/IFI) have a different way of looking at the world.
Having Hitler and Mussolini hunt down your family to kill them all can make
you a bit reserved.
The Fiat group, owned by IFI has some very deep and involved coporate ties.
You'd be amazed if you saw all the US branded mainstay corporations that are
wholly owned by IFI/Fiat...
GM probably tried to squeeze them in their American way, and Fiat didn't
flinch or blink...
I've seen that before...
Jeff
"Jeffrey DeWitt" wrote..
Jeff DeWitt
operations, which apparently have been having a tough time.
Jeff DeWitt
Robert Black
was any indication,I don't know how the have managed to stay in the
automobile business this long.
"Jeff DeWitt" <JeffD...@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:DCRPd.68040$dt3.7...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
Jeff DeWitt
when it worked. One time I was in the dealership getting it worked on
and they rolled in a new dark blue 2000 Spider to prep for it's new
owner. What a beautiful little car, the English might have invented
that sort of car, and the Japanese might have figured out how to make
them reliable, but no one could make them as beautiful as the Italians.
Jeff DeWitt
Kevin Wolford
States. These were the two seater targa roofed sports cars famous for the
strut tower rust through recall in the late 1980's. As I recall, the
structural & rust problems were so bad with that car that if you took it
back for the recall, the dealer confiscated the car, and the owner got some
sort of cash settlement or certificate toward the purchase of a new vehicle.
It wasn't good toward another Fiat, because by then, Fiat had left the U.S.
That recall was one of the only times I can remember a recall actually
calling for the vehicle to be taken off the road.
Who else remembers the Strada, the last boxy Fiat to be brought into the
states? As I recall, it also suffered from severe rust problems. But it
wasn't banned from the streets.
Fiat and Mitsubishi (Auto Divisions) are both on the edge of financial
collapse and they are continuing to fall into a swirling, pulling vortex.
Just like the recent decision by Daimler not to invest any further in
Mitsubishi (Chrysler had just about completely divorced themselves from
Mitsubishi before the German takeover), this is a wise decision on the part
of GM not to pour more money into a financial black hole.
This is a decision by the new management at GM not to follow through on a
bad decision by their predecessors. GM needs Fiat right now like a hole in
their head. Whatever they have to pay to get out of Fiat is money well
spent.
"Jeff DeWitt" <JeffD...@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:wJSPd.3440$VI1.9...@twister.southeast.rr.com...
John Poulos
years, before any rust issues.
--
JP/Maryland
Studebaker On the Net http://stude.com
My Ebay items:http://www.stude.com/EBAY/
64 Challenger (Green Wrapper)
63 R2 4 speed GT Hawk #2
62 GT Hawk (Ind. Div)
56 Golden Hawk
50 Commander Coupe
kelm...@msn.com
under the floor behind the driver (my memory is imperfect, but this is
close). When a coworker answered a recall Nissan bought him out of the
van. I've always wondered what they did with the van's they bought up.
Fiats are a riot to drive when they run. Had a girlfriend with a 124
sport spider. Didn't run worth a crap until I removed one the sets of
points out of the dual point distributor. Ran great after that until
the next thing broke. Funny how cars reflect the temperment of the
nation that builds 'em.....
Jeff DeWitt
it (and those are interference engines, it got ugly), the CV joints went
bad, the transmission lost 3rd gear ... but it didn't rust!
Jeff DeWitt
Craig Parslow
> Fiat and Mitsubishi (Auto Divisions) are both on the edge of financial
> collapse and they are continuing to fall into a swirling, pulling vortex.
> Just like the recent decision by Daimler not to invest any further in
> Mitsubishi (Chrysler had just about completely divorced themselves from
> Mitsubishi before the German takeover), this is a wise decision on the
> part of GM not to pour more money into a financial black hole.
More than a few automakes learned from BMW's mistake of buying Rover Group
from British Aerospace, and the financial albatross it was for them, despite
sinking billions of Pounds into new product.
Craig.
mid...@earthlink.net
More room in that thing than in the Jensen Healey that replaced it.
Come to think of it, better in every way, except acceleration.
I just remembered, I even kept up with a be-winged Z-car going down a
twisty mountainsh road.
This was a road sbove Los Gatos that the county seemed to have built
for no purpose, except for dam maintenance.
Karl
RoddingRon
Nate Nagel
> I know the Yugo used a Fiat derivitive engine.
> Had an aquaintence buy a Yugo just to get the head for his Spyder.
> Seems the whole Yugo was cheaper than just a head from the boneyard <lol>..
> Jeff
>
The whole Yugo was a copy built under license of an older FIAT model.
nate
--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel
Jeff Rice
j.shavish
i drove a fiat in the allright parking lot in boston in 1973 it was
faster than a 911 it was a 2 door great wood and leather inside it had
nice stanless around the windows did not expect much it was better
than i though
Paul Johnson
<kelm...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1108353360....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>.... Fiats are a riot to drive when they run. ...
A foreign car mechanic once told me that FIAT stood for "Fix it again Tony".
Paul Johnson
Craig Parslow
"Nate Nagel" <njn...@flycast.net> wrote in message
news:ruednQUqXdT...@comcast.com...
> Jeff Rice wrote:
>
>> I know the Yugo used a Fiat derivitive engine.
>> Had an aquaintence buy a Yugo just to get the head for his Spyder.
>> Seems the whole Yugo was cheaper than just a head from the boneyard
>> <lol>..
>> Jeff
The same could be said of a Lada and it components made under licence in the
former USSR. I know a Maserati Mistral owner who needed the pushbutton
lock assembly for the rear hatch. A 'genuine' Maserati part was $200 and 3
months to get. A Lada one is identical, and was at the local autowreckers
for $1.95 and it fit perfectly. He was even able to change out his
tumblers from the old pushbutton and keep his original key.
Craig.
John
Yes, Nissan had a small van that looked very similar to the Toyota van. I
was working at a Nissan dealership shortly after that recall/buyback
happened. They were inherent to engine fires. Nissan had recalled them
several times and tried to fix the problem but could not. They figured the
only safe thing to do to resolve the problem was to recall them all and buy
them back. They were crushed. I remember going to a salvage yard in
Houston years before this and saw row upon row of these vans crushed. I
asked the guy up front what the heck was up with that and he told me it was
a massive recall. We had one of them on the back lot of the dealership for
a long time that we had bought back. We later moved the dealership and I
was helping move file boxes and found some of the buy back documents. they
paid those people pretty well for the most part most of them were pretty
worn out or trashed by that time. They even recalled all the parts for
them.
Another big recall we had there was all the older 300ZX and Maximas were
recalled and Nissan paid to replace the entire fuel injector/rail setups as
the newer fuel was causing the rubber to fail. What a PITA that recall was.
I had more than one car come in burned and the service manager would ask me
to do a "P & A" (parts quote and availability) on the entire under the hood.
Oye was that a pain. One never realizes how many parts are under there!!!!
I had to give him a printout with every part number and price. They were
many pages long.
John
Bill Glass
Could be a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to bail out a
company or divest yourself of deadwood iin the
corporate makeup.
Plus if Jeff is correct about Fiat still having ties to
companies from the war, there is a chance that seests could
be yanked to pay off lawsuits, etc.
BG
Jeff DeWitt
put out a whopping 52 hp. I bet a 59 Lark 6 could blow it's doors off!
http://www.carsfromitaly.com/fiat/index.html
The were REALLY cool looking little things though.
Jeff DeWitt
Kevin Wolford
Billion once, versus paying billions and billions more to buy the remaining
90% of Fiat, and then assuming a good chance of losing at least $1 Billion
per year until Fiat's problems could be fixed, gives a better perspective.
If the problems are too big to fix and Fiat fails, $2 Billion is but a cup
of water in the Mediterranean Sea of red ink.
"Bill Glass" <bondo...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:42111DDF...@aol.com...
mid...@earthlink.net
press, when BMW bought Rover.
Rover had been building Hondas and Honda-based cars and Honda was the
natural firm to buy it. They weren't even told it was up fpor sale by
British Aerospace and the general population was upset as they/we
figured that Honda would treat all concerned well had they taken over.
Germans were also upset as they didn't want anything to do with that
Rover.
BMW shareholders got rid of the team who did the dirty deed and sold
Rover off to a bunch of dreamers.
Hmm, Why does Chrysler suddenly come to mind?
Karl
Craig Parslow
<mid...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1108446032.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> BMW shareholders got rid of the team who did the dirty deed and sold
> Rover off to a bunch of dreamers.
And just how far have these 'dreamers' gone with it?? The Chinese have
since got an 80% share of Rover amid sinking sales, a product line that's
starting to get stale, etc. The 'new' V8 that is now powering some of the
Rovers is the familiar Ford 4.6, since they have no money left develop their
own. At least when Rover owned it, they made a serious attempt to make
something of the line, and if things went as they should have, we would have
seen a revival of the Riley and Woseley brands as well. Angry British
apathy obviously didn't do the company any good at all, and Rover is no
farther ahead than before.
>
> Hmm, Why does Chrysler suddenly come to mind?
There's a different issue at stake with that one. Rover was a 100% takeover
while Chrysler is supposed to be a 50-50 merger. I'm sitting back and
watching now with the new line of rwd Chryslers, Dodges, and the Hemi
powered trucks now on the market. Looks like the pendulum has swung back to
U.S. side for the time being, and is no longer getting the short end of the
stick like they did in the past few years.
Craig.
>
> Karl
>
Kevin Wolford
Mercedes "saving" an American company. When, in fact, a strong argument can
be made to the contrary!
Chrysler's market share under German control has fallen from 17-18% in 1997
to about 11% currently.
The "Hot" 300 barely outsold all the 2004 carlines it replaced which were in
their fifth year of production.. The Canadian plant where the 300 and
Magnum are made produced about 150,000 cars last year. In 1997, the year
the second generation LH cars were changed over, the plant produced over
250,000 cars. Hemi installation rates exceed 50%, making you wonder what
would have happened without that engine.
The Pacifica and Crossfire, the first "Daimlerized Chryslers", have never
come close to sales estimates, and have been heavily discounted from a few
weeks after introduction. Only about 39,000 Magnum Wagons were sold last
year. The 300 has stayed above 10,000 units per month, but they are not in
short supply and I could drive home my choice, Hemi or otherwise, today if I
wanted. Meanwhile, Impala, Camry and Accord sell somewhere around 60-80,000
units per month each. In other words, the 300 probably isn't even on the
competition's radar screen. The LH cars, when they were fully supported by
the company, sold upwards of 25,000 units per month.
Daimler has a lot of money and they know how to throw it around to gain the
support of a sympathetic press. Maybe that's why no one's talking about
Mercedes-Benz placing 14th out of 16 makes in reliability studies last year.
At least they did beat out Volkswagen and Kia!
"Craig Parslow" <stude...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:m1iQd.396566$6l.125295@pd7tw2no...
reichsrundfunk
been havinga tough time.
-George-
Kevin Wolford
11 of which are German, I'd like to know what exactly was 50/50 about the
"merger", besides the name (and look who comes second).
I can't see the "Chrysler Group's" Chief Executive Officer Dr. Dieter
Zetsche doing a series of commercials like Lee Iaccoca pleading with the
public to buy American playing out either! (Especially with his heavy
Turkish / German accent!)
Make no mistake who controls what's left of Chrysler now. Heck, they've
even been removed from most domestic automotive stock indexes (replaced by
Harley Davidson and Monaco Coach in Business Week) DCX stock is owned in
majority by the German Government, Deutsch Bank, and Middle Eastern Sheiks.
The Emirate of Dubai very recently became one of the largest DCX
shareholders. DCX does not depend on Wall Street for investment monies.
Americans have little say in what happens at DCX.
"Kevin Wolford" <kwol...@NOSPAMkconline.com> wrote in message
news:S_CdnRB7n8r...@kconline.com...
j.shavish
http://www.ritzsite.net/Fiat_Dino/05_Fiat_Dino.htm it was
fun to drive that was my job one summer just to park cars ps it was no
850
Jeff DeWitt
850, what a neat little car!
Jeff DeWitt