Non-green, gas guzzling SUVs saved Chrysler

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Last Updated: May 24. 2011 1:02AM

Payne: SUVs saved Chrysler

Henry Payne/ The Michigan View.com

Chrysler and the White House will celebrate the Detroit icon's $5.9 billion repayment of government loans Tuesday in a ceremony that will be hailed by both sides for the same reason: The government bailout had become a liability for both entities.

In fact, government-free Chrysler is hardly off the debt hook, but is simply refinancing its debt with private rather than public debt-holders. For its part, the U.S. government will still have a 6.6 percent equity stake in Chrysler - but by removing itself as the company's loan shark, the White House can boast of the unpopular bailout's success in returning taxpayer loans 6 years ahead of schedule. That's an important sound-bite in an election year.

But there is one inconvenient truth you won't hear at the Sterling Heights, Mich. ceremony: Chrysler wouldn't be here had it not defied its green White House masters. Chrysler's return to profitability is a direct result of the fabulous success of its SUVs.

The White House hand-picked Fiat to shepherd Chrysler out of bankruptcy in June, 2009 because of Barack Obama's obsession with remaking Detroit's automakers in the image of their European peers. Convinced that Americans craved small cars to fight the warming scourge, the president demanded Fiat bring its best-selling 500 Eurobox to the States as part of the acquisition deal. Obama was convinced that Fiat could reform the immoral, gas-swigging, SUV-dependent Chrysler.

The exact opposite occurred.

Two years later, the little 500 is about to go on sale in dealer "boutiques" - but it is the resurgence of America's appetite for trucks that has brought Chrysler back from the dead.

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