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Old 04-02-2019, 04:01 PM   #6
XDCX
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 14,869
Default It was Jim Press' fault...

When Cerberus first hired Jim Press from Toyota I was impressed - I thought it was a fantastic hire.

As time would pass, however, I increasingly saw Jim Press as an untrustworthy person who would say whatever he needed to say to get what he wanted.

My theory is the President wanted to bailout the UAW and didn't care about anything else. That said, he knew he needed a believable story on why the U.S. Government should bailout Chrysler. How would the NEWCO version of Chrysler survive if the OLDCO version died?

At some point I remember reading or hearing that the fate of the 789 was essentially Jim Press' fault. Press apparently made some comment that Toyota had fewer dealers than Chrysler did and the Auto Task Force picked up on that as being part of their NEWCO solution.

The Auto Task Force would try to convince the public that NEWCO was a more viable company because it had fewer dealers just like Toyota.

In my opinion, Chrysler's management didn't care what they had to do to get the Government bailout money and agreed to do whatever the Auto Task Force deemed necessary. If Chrysler needed to slaughter 789 dealers to get the bailout money then that's what they'd do.
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