The Dodge Depot?

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[RAW]Lacking the business acumen of big-buck bankers I never saw it coming: Cerberus announced August 5 that Robert Nardelli would be the CEO of the newly solo Chrysler Corporation. And I&#8217;m not the only one. Analyst John Casesa of Casesa Shapiro wrote in Automotive News (8/6/07) a piece titled, &#8220;Look for a hard-nosed Chrysler board&#8221; and referenced &#8220;the presumed chairman, former Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard.&#8221; Yes, John Casesa was wrong too. <br/><br/>Bernhard, who&#8217;s been bounced around the top ranks of some sizable automakers the last few years, clearly has that &#8220;hard-nosed&#8221; air. Dodge is an &#8211;in-your-face car company and Bernhard&#8217;s an in-your-face kind of guy. What other car exec would ride into a major auto show on a Viper-powered motorcycle? <br/><br/>Nardelli comes most recently from nuts-and-bolts&#8230;CEO of the Home Depot. I consider Home Depot a retailer. In the car biz retailer has another name: Dealer. Chrysler needs to come up with the good product--cars like the 300, PT Cruiser and the Jeep JT &#8220;concept&#8221; &#8211;for the dealers to sell. Can Nardelli do that? <br/><br/>At Home Depot Nardelli doubled revenue in six years, much of it by opening more stores. More stores is something Chrysler doesn&#8217;t need. Home Depot didn&#8217;t have $19 billion in pension/retirement costs nor as many competitors either. <br/><br/>But Nardelli, who gets a rumored salary of a buck a year, wasn&#8217;t liked by Home Depot shareholders. Money books put last year&#8217;s earnings at $38 million and he would not answer questions at a May 2006 meeting. He was gone in January 2007 with a severance package that was a little over 210 million dollars and the stock price was no higher than when he started. In the words of an acquaintance, &#8220;the guy&#8217;s a crook. Anybody who takes that much away on essentially no investor return is a crook.&#8221; <br/><br/>So depending on your point of view, Chrysler has a crook or a savior running it. After last year&#8217;s loss of 680 million, give or take, the investors probably won&#8217;t give Nardelli more than a year to fix it. And the car biz runs considerably more lead time than new bricks and pipe. <br/><br/>Most recent Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda is bumped to President and Vice Chairman but playing nice; hopefully his &#8220;turnaround&#8221; plan to make Chrysler profitable again in 2008 will work and he&#8217;ll get credit. Chrysler COO Eric Ridenour is leaving, no reason given. <br/><br/>Nardelli was quoted on a finance web page as &#8220;excited to be part of a team focused on re-establishing Chrysler as a standalone industry leader, with a renewed focus on meeting the needs of the customer.&#8221; Since customer satisfaction went through the floor while he was cutting costs at Home Depot I&#8217;m not holding my breath. <br/><br/>But if he and LaSorda can get Bernhard back as the head product guy (like GM&#8217;s Bob Lutz, just younger) they have a chance. <br/>[/RAW]