Naaah. Thing is, money's so cheap right now that if you want to show progress to your shareholders you buy something so you don't have to get them used to seeing a dividend (lookin' at you, Amazon). If Marchionne has let it be known that Chrysler is up for sale, people will kick the tires. It's also worth noting that depending on how the deal is structured, the only way to see what a company's internal finances look like is to make an offer on it. It's been hypothesized that Google plays this game a lot.
Yeah. I don't know how to read these articles, cause I've seen multiple times "Chinese Company X Flirting With American Market But is Afraid of all the Competition" and I've also seen multiple times articles that say "Marchionne Wants To Sell This, Buy That, Split This, FCA, Ferrari, Maserati, Jeep, blah blah blah." I do find it interesting that in the '80s, Chrylser bought AMC because it wanted the Jeep brand and people are speculating that foreign companies are now eyeing FCA for the same reason. I mean, Jeeps are okay, but I wouldn't consider the brand as worthy of buying a whole company. Looking back, I'm kind of glad GM didn't buy FCA. That would have been scary big. Ditto if they ever flirted with selling to VAG (wouldn't that be crazy?).
And Hummer, Geo, Saturn, Cadillac, and a bunch of legacy brands that all went defunct in the vicinity of WWII. I mean, maybe I'm just untrusting, but I'd say the two American companies that needed bailouts and restructuring to survive our last recession don't make a good combination. There's too big to fail, then there's Capitalist Cthulu. Edit: Opel, Vauxhall, Holden. Holy shit. GM is huge.
No no no. Durant acquired Oldsmobile later in 1908. The next year, he brought in Cadillac, Cartercar, Elmore, Ewing, and Oakland (later known as Pontiac). In 1909, General Motors also acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessors of GMC Truck.
I'm confused. All the brands I listed either are or were GM brands. Also, it's interesting to see that chart now and wonder what it would have been like 20 years ago. For instance, Chrysler and Mitsubishi would have some lines between them, ditto for GM and Suzuki. It's kind of surprising to see Mahindra on there too. About five to ten years back, they were flirting with bringing light duty pickup trucks to the US, but plans fell through for a whole slew of reasons (costs, safety regulations, fuel regulations, etc.). Sometimes, I totally forget that they even exist.