Almost a decade after Daimler Benz paid $36 billion for Chrysler, it is now paying $1 billion more to unload the company. Wall Street has been crowing about a new day in Detroit. Private equity will finally confront the intractable demands of unions. It will force managers to look beyond the next quarter's stock price in product planning. It will rescue American automobile manufacturing from its own ossified culture and certain demise.
Well, maybe.
The easy dough in Detroit has always come from following, rather than from leading, public tastes. Chrysler's contract with the UAW comes up this summer. Cerberus, the buyout firm, has a less-than-spectacular record in negotiating with unions, most notably with the Delphi Corp., its last purchase. And private companies, no less than public firms, tend to have a short-term view of the bottom line.
