
Chrysler is bankrupt. To a British ear that sounds pretty stark, but in the US it means something rather different – ‘chapter 11 bankruptcy‘. It will keep operating, but it will be able to fend off its creditors and try to renegotiate its debts.

Chrysler is bankrupt. To a British ear that sounds pretty stark, but in the US it means something rather different – ‘chapter 11 bankruptcy‘. It will keep operating, but it will be able to fend off its creditors and try to renegotiate its debts.

Would you buy a new car if the Government gave you £2000 to do it? In Germany that’s roughly what you get, provided you scrap one that’s over nine years old. It has meant sales of small cars over there are surging, despite the economic crash. So you won’t be surprised to learn that dealers […]
If GM got a bit of a kicking fom the Obama administration, how about Chrysler? The President’s team has said it doesn’t believe Chrysler can survive alone, so if it doesn’t finalise the deal with Fiat within the next 30 days, it gets no more Government money. Which would inevitably leave it bankrupt.

President Barack Obama has showed his teeth. He’s told the boss of GM to resign. Presumably he wouldn’t have done that unless he was about to give GM the billions in loans the company is asking for. The president needed to get some collateral, didn’t he?

I dunno if it was just me, but I had a strange sense of deja vu when I saw the Nissan Qazana show car at Geneva 2009. I use the French term advisedly. Clink the ‘read more’ link to see why.

Another wave of catastrophic car-company news this morning, as Honda closes its Swindon plant for a staggering four months. Look around the industry and you see that even the golden boys are in the cack.

Beware seeing every car at the Detroit show through the lens of recession. It wasn’t until about four months ago that anyone saw this crisis coming. It takes at least six months to do a concept and two years for a production car. So everything here was conceived in pre-meltdown times.

Welcome to the Detroit show, where the spotlight’s firmly on GM and Chrysler. Chapter one of a Great American Comeback story – or an obituary? As far as I can see it’s one of each. GM might just pull through, but Chrysler doesn’t stand an earthly.
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