Chrysler's new boss and Koenigsegg's new pal

Well tonight I have to eat a bit of humble pie I made a comment about Saab being stuck with GM for another year. Well it's really more like a few months until the lease on the manufacturing for the 9-4x runs out.

Exotic car fans will have heard of a little company from Sweden called Koenigsegg, they produce ridiculously expensive cars and last year the 45 employees of this company cranked out a whopping 18 cars. What can be said of those cars? Well to paraphrase a line from sin city their cars are "boner inspiring."

Why do I mention Koenigsegg? Simple. In an "ant swallowed the elephant" move they are purchasing Saab from GM. What? Yeah that's right this 45 person million dollar car manufacturer is taking on the roughly 3400 workers and the 93000 cars sold last year that Saab has. Did I mention the $600 million dollar financing bill that's being guaranteed by the Swedish Government? Yeah put all that together and Saab may yet live again, or one of my favorite car makers is going to tank.

Little side note here. GM is also selling all but 35% of its stake in Opel and Vauxhall, Saturn is being sold to the Penske group and there is a preliminary arrangement to sell Hummer to a china based manufacturing company. All that's left is for GM to stop buying Daewoo crud (unable to sell in north amaerica due to lacking safety equipment) and selling it under a Chevy badge, with the added safety features mind you, and there may be hope for one of this country's formerly prominent auto manufacturers.

Ok enough stalling, I promised a bit on how Fiat is going to come to own Chrysler, well here goes. In a move that is really allowing Fiat to buy Chrysler stock for pennies on the dollar Fiat is going to be holding at first a 20% stake in Chrysler, later rising to 35% and eventually to a majority stake in the new Fiat-Chrysler alliance. This is all provided deal mandated targets are met and the bills on the bailout money are paid. Let this be a lesson to people in publicly traded companies, never owe too much to too many or you wind up working for someone else.

That's enough for tonight it's time to head back to some 10+ year old re-runs of deep space nine.