The Cerberus deal was very multi-faceted, as I recall. I remember how they were "the best fit" to take over Chrysler (according to many industry people). They already had some presence in the automotive area and alleged expertise. I recall the many former Toyota/Lexus people who eagerly claimed they wanted to "Save the Great American Icon" of Chrysler. Sounded good. Then the 30-year Toyota man that took over Chrysler. When I watched the Senate proceedings on how many of Chrysler's actions to close dealers, pre-bankruptcy. Several small town dealers were there to protest that they had completely complied with all of the Chrysler "desires" and still ended up on the "close: list. It appeared to me that the Chrysler guy was clueless or had no knowledge of what the dealers were claiming. Then, in the year afterward, he filed for personal bankruptcy citing several hundred thousand $$$$$ of debt. Kind of sounded like Toyota was glad he left them?
Cerberus used a 1980s Chrysler plan to delete Plymouth. As if that somebody inside of Chrysler had thought of it, that gave it additional credibility? I've observed that when some person in a car company gets an "idea" and then seeks to push their agenda, they find ways to do it (which seemingly make sense, on the surface). Obviously, somebody in Chrysler squelched it back then, so it was filed away somewhere. Cerberus found it and acted on it. As with many buy-outs, the new owners seek to cut things so the financials look good as the corporate operations might suffer. A normal thing when financial people run the car companies, by observation. Looks good until market penetration declines too much, as it did with GM in the 1990s, during the beloved "brand management" strategy of Mr. Smale.
Perhaps I'm wrong to believe that Cerberus probably trusted that Daimler had done the right things at Chrysler? Product decisions and all (Dodge Calibre being one of them?). They they discovered what they'd really bought and whom they'd hired. To me, these things tended to reflect poorly on people Toyota had on their payrolls previously. Much of what led me to perceive they were "resume builders" more than real managers. BTAIM.
Certainly, Fiat came out of the Chrysler deal very nicely. Funny thing about Fiat is that in Iacocca's book in the earlier 1980s, the last chapters were how that Chrysler would need an international partner in the future. AND, the partner he mentioned was Fiat, due to their large international distribution network. At the time, it seemed to me that Fiat needed Chrysler more than Chrysler needed Fiat. Nothing was mentioned about Fiat's poor USA-model reliability records, just the dealer network that could be adapted to add Chrysler into the mix.
I have read (in an article by Chris Theodore) that there were some good parts of the Chrysler-Daimler deal, so all was not as negative as some of the news reports might have indicated. Although "the equals" soon became Daimler-dominated. Dr. Z and Wolfgang ended up being like "the kids in the candy store" when they came to Chrysler. They ate in the normal employee lunch area, from reports I read at that time. When Dr. Z returned to Germany to run D-B, he had a 300 SRT for his company car. Which generated the TSB to reprogram the cruise control so it would stay engaged past a particular speed (on the Autobahn). So, some positive things after the initial period of things.
Respectfully,
CBODY67