“Unlike premium brand customers, American volume brand customers are far too price-sensitive to absorb its cost.” - Are you kidding me? What others customers out there could absorb such a cost? He seriously thought that Americans were too cheap to pay a couple thousand more for a better, non-plastic interior.

F*n Nazi sells 50% of his empire capacity in a country of cheap non-premium brand customers. Without our ganstas, nitwitted “entertainers”, heiresses and tasteless dentists there would be no Mercedes brand whatsoever.

bill gates has enough money- he should buy 80% of Daimler and rape them

Yeah, they learnt that Chrysler was ****

Deutschers FTL!!

“Leading edge technology?” Is he talking about their brake-by-wire failure? Or the other useless gizmos that Mercedes-Benz is known for. They can take their “high-tech” and we’ll keep our Hemi!

**** those german bastards! All they know how to do is make over priced **** boxes for pompus ass munchers. Everyone knew it wouldn’t work because they didn’t know how to market cars to the average masses.

‘Volume brand customers’…ouch. That’s gonna leave a Deutsche mark.

It’s Jimmy Carter’s fault.

Perhaps if Diamler had treated the whole deal as an actual merger and not an outright takeover, then there would have been much better cooperation. Perhaps if Diamler had treated Chrysler as an equal to Mercedes within the corporation instead of as some bastard step-child, then there would have been better integration.

“‘It’s fair to say that we overestimated the potential of passing leading-edge technology from Mercedes-Benz to Chrysler,’ he said. ‘Unlike premium brand customers, American volume brand customers are far too price-sensitive to absorb its cost.’”

In other words… Diamler realized they couldn’t keep forcing Chrysler to buy old, overpriced, last-generation platforms/part/technology from Mercedes and then pass such price gouging onto the consumers exactly how they would’ve liked.

It’s a real shame too… Had Diamler gone into this deal with honest intentions of creating a global automotive power rather than with their real hidden, exploitative agenda, then the company could have brought to market some truly extraordinary products… Products which would have resulted from the unique strengths each company was capable of bringing to the table. But reality has shown it was all nothing but sweet talk… which Chrysler and everyone else fell for. That was the only reason Chrysler agreed to go into the deal… Despite anyone’s misconceptions, Chrysler didn’t “need” the merger… They weren’t in any sort of dire condition as some have tried to make it seem and they were definitely in a much stronger position at the time of the merger then they were when they came out of it and also are now. They were “wooed” by all those fanciful possibilities Diamler whispered into their ears and just like many women having been pursued by a suave “gentleman”… Chrysler wound up just getting screwed in the end.

All Diamler wanted was to get into Chrysler’s “pants” and they succeeded… I hope no one is fooled by these “remorseful” statements by Zetsche… Diamler got exactly what they wanted from this deal and then some.

I was going to say something myself but AMGoff beat me to it.

As many of us have been saying for quite some time, “CHRYSLER got screwed.”

I’d love to know what you guys think Chrysler brought to the table in this merger of “equals”, because i can’t figure it out, and yet you bitch about Daimler. Daimler bought a lame duck, Chrysler didn’t get screwed they screwed Daimler by having nothing to offer.

Commodore, I sedond that.

Also, which other country on earth would want to pay for the non-sense they put out. The U.S. is the number one market for many brands in the world. It consumes more vehicles than any single country out there. The bottom line is that good desireable products sell. And undersireable exteriors with bland, plastic, monotone interiors, with questionable reliabilty will get you where Daimler took a very profitable automaker (in the 90’s).

^second

LaCaCaLover, Kerkorian brought a lawsuit against M-B stating that it was takeover. Unfortunately for him, M-B could prove that it wasn’t and was a merger. Therefore it was marriage of equals. In Wester style marriage whatever both parties bring to the table it is considered joint community property. M-B did not treat it that way. As a result they spend 36 billion USDs on this fiasco and then gave it away for less then 8 billion to Cerberus with guarantees to supply technology for a number of years. If we were less forgiving people, we should not buy Nazi’s machinery for the next 20 years. If M-B would do it f*n Arab country they would have planes flying into their headquarters on the daily basis with flaming bastards looking for 7 virgins.

autonut, so you admit Chrysler brought nothing to the marriage and expected to take everything from M-B? you say Mercedes spent 36 billion USDs on Chrysler and still couldn’t make it work, I’m trying to figure out how that makes M-B the bad guys. You haven’t explained what M-B did wrong apart from buying the basket case in the first place.
M-B bought a ****ty company and got its fingers burnt, just like BMW did with MG-Rover.

when M-B merged with Chrysler quality of their cars was worse then Chrysler’s. Actually there was a period of time when M-B had worse quality then today and Chrysler was delivering a lot of income (may not be profit but income). Chrysler was to provide avenue for mass produced product and bridge alliances. Zetsche was managing Chrysler for a number of years. There was funds transfer between here and there and Chrysler had cash in the bank prior to merger. If that cash was spend on development of technology which benefited Benz then Chrysler lost. Also, as member of US auto industry Chrysler was privy to scientific research that was paid by US taxpayer, not Benz. Ford and GM were protesting sharing the yield of that research with combined ChryslerBenz, but lost the case. You assume that M-B was a perfect company prior to merger, but it is far from truth. They were loosing ground to BMW (and still do) and had own house in disarray. Chrysler was in better shape then it is now: raped and pilfered. If we to assume that Benz house was in order - why merge with Chrysler? Usually it is done when company can’t achieve its financial goals and objectives on its own to pacify shareholders discontent.

LaCarLover… Then you must not have known all that much about Chrysler, nor the supposed “merger.” You present the same old line… “MB just bought a ****ty compnay…,” yet I’ve never been able to get anyone who subscribes to that line of thought to explain why MB would have bought such a ****ty, worthless company in the first place… Diamler obviously saw things that they wanted to have approached Chrysler about the “merger,” and yes… it was Diamler who went to Chrysler. At the time, Chrysler was producing a number of decent cars and was considered to be the most forward thinking domestic car maker in terms of styling… They had great success with their LH cars and their “cloud” cars - everyone also likes to forget that the Cirrus was car of the year. Chrysler had more than enough talent and money to remain independent, until Diamler came along and sweet-talked them into that horrid deal. Chrysler had a number of things to its credit that Diamler found attractive… two of the biggest being the ability to efficiently mass-produce vehicles while maintaining a certain level of reliability and build quality (does anyone remember what MB’s reliability was like throughout the 90s?) as well as the most advanced (for that time) computer design studio on the planet. MB wanted both of those things… and they got them. Afterwards they also revealed one of their hidden desires, that being having someone they could “force” to purchase old Mercedes parts and technology while making a nice profit (funny how after the “merger,” MB started becoming fairly profitable. That’s right… they made Chrysler buy parts from Mercedes to use on Chryslers (and only their last-generation parts).. If it were a true merger and they were truly regarded as one company.. Why on earth would one division be made to purchase parts from its “sister” division?? Why wasn’t the technology just shared and put into mass-production by Chryslers manufacturing talents?

That’s all merely the tip of the iceberg…. If you “can’t figure it out” then that’s only because you have no real desire to do so.

AMGoff we posted at the same time but content is the same: **** Benz!

Bob Eaton thinks it was a great deal

Bob ****in Eaton got payed off ALOT ..and vanished off the automotive world that ****in schmuck. **** Benz, ****in irritating, seriously. they’ll be trying to blame Chrysler for any mishap for the next 100 years. burn in hell bitches.

The Germans raped Chrysler. Chrysler was a cash cow that paid for the development costs of various Mercedes products of the early 2000’s. Everything going wrong on my 300C is a Mercedes related design. The front suspension rattles and can’t be fixed. Ditto the rattle in the steering column. Also replacement of the torque converter in its Mercedes transmission. Wonder if that leaking gas tank seal was German too? It leaked fumes into the passenger compartment. Unfortunately the 300C really needs to be serviced at a Mercedes dealer.

Autonut… Ha! I didn’t even notice that you had posted more or less the same response the same time I did. Lacarlover, is unfortunately speaking without a single lick of knowledge on this subject… as is anyone else who makes the assertion that MB was the one who got screwed by shacking up with a “failure” like Chrysler…. Even if that was true, what exactly would that say about Diamler?? Chrysler was promised a fruitful, productive union and ended up getting ****ed in an abusive marriage, plain and simple.

Diamler knew what they were doing from the get-go and got exactly what they wanted.

The worst part is just the thought of where Chrysler would be right now had they remained independent and had not been stifled by almost a decade of mismanagement from Stuttgart. At the very least it’s safe to say they’d be in a much stronger position than they’re in now.

o rly?