Nissan/Renault wants a piece of Chrysler

According to Autoblog from a story in the Detroit News, Nissan/Renault has offered to purchase 20% of Chrysler from Cerberus. The deal would keep Chrysler intact as a separate entity, but bring more Nissan and Renault products into the U.S. through Chrysler (a version of the Dodge Ram is already scheduled to become the next Nissan Titan, and a Nissan platform is scheduled to become the basis for a new Chrysler small car.)

The problem is that Cerberus apparently doesn't want to get rid of 20% of Chrysler, it wants to get rid of 100%, and neither Nissan nor Renault have the money to buy the company outright. So, unless Cerberus decides that it wants to stay in the car business, it's increasingly looking likely that the deal will be with GM or no one.

Bad times if you're in the car business

According to Autoblog, for the first time in its history (and, some sources indicate, the first time since the 1980s), every car maker and brand had lower sales in the U.S. last month than in September 2007. Every one. The best performer, Audi, was down only 5.4% year over year, while the worst performer, Hummer, was down 54.8% (no surprise there). In terms of manufacturers, GM fared best, down 15.8% from last year, primarily on the strength of the company's "Employee Pricing for Everyone" program, while Nissan was worst, down 36.8%. Nissan, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota were all down more than 30%, demonstrating that the problem isn't limited to the Big Three.

Other than the GM Employee Pricing program, which helped Chevy, Saturn and GMC in particular, there doesn't seem to be a pattern to explain why one brand did better than another. Some people were still buying luxury cars, Mercedes-Benzes in particular; they were down 16.4%, while Lexus was down 36.1%, and BMW was down 29.5%. Why did Mercedes do so much better? I have no idea. Why was Subaru down only 11.9% while Mazda was down 35.6% and Toyota was down 31.8%? Again, I haven't a clue.

The point is that the car business is terrible right now, whether you're a manufacturer or a dealer. Most industry observers expect more promotions to be announced, and perhaps an extension of GM's Employee Discount program, in the next few days. It's a great time to buy a car, assuming you can get credit (which is one of the big reasons why everyone's sales are down.)