The Great Sergio comes down from the mountaintop, Part II.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. Coming off last week’s events, with Bill Ford announcing the “orderly transition” in the Ford Motor Company executive suite (See “On The Table” for more – WG), whereupon Alan Mulally is handing the reins of the company to savvy industry veteran Mark Fields, you would think that would be enough for a while. Oh no, not in this business. The auto industry is, after all, a swirling maelstrom of chaos that relishes its relentless 24/7 slog and wears it like a badge of honor. Too often to its detriment, I might add.

This week we have the dubious pleasure of awaiting The Great Sergio Marchionne, who will deign to grace the assembled peasants and disadvantaged with an audience in order to announce his next five-year plan for the newly christened Fiat Chrysler Automobiles - FCA for short – in an all-day ritual slated for Tuesday (May 6) that will be one-part coronation and acknowledgment of his brilliance, and one-part cornucopia of belligerent bombast as The Great Leader reminds the keyboard-stained wretches in the media of his accomplishments and what he expects from the poor souls toiling in grim obscurity on his behalf in the future.

(Although it has yet to be determined whether Marchionne will actually appear live and in person, or handle the whole séance by Skype from his corporate jet as it circles above the Atlantic.)

Suffice to say, in the run-up to this "happening" out in Auburn Hills the media has been orchestrated and cajoled to dutifully report on the The Great Sergio’s achievements in a rote display of lazy rip-and-post “journalism” that chronicled the improbable Sergio-saves-Chrysler story for the umpteenth time. If you’ve haven’t had the chance to read any of the stories about The Great Sergio Marchionne and the latest “resurrection” of Chrysler that have been floating around of late, I’ll save you the trouble. Here, in a nutshell, is what you missed: Marchionne is the genius who saved the poor and the downtrodden souls toiling at Chrysler from a fate worse than death. He single-handedly performed a miracle that no other auto executive was even remotely capable of doing, and he did it all while crisscrossing the Atlantic juggling myriad details through some 30+ direct reports and with the fate of the world on his shoulders. Wow, we should all be exhausted just contemplating the tireless awesomeness of it all.

(One industry rag even went so far as posting grades for Marchionne - with nary an “incomplete” or “F” in sight - in a pathetic display of sucking up that even made veteran kneepad-wearing scribes wince in disgust.)

So, in the interest of the High-Octane Truth, it behooves me to remind everyone of what they won’t hear from, or about, The Great Sergio tomorrow, because everything else of late has taken on the distinct odor of pure unmitigated bullshit.

1. Fiat was “gifted” the assets of Chrysler for a song by the U.S. Government. Now, some lesser lights in the media have taken great umbrage with me saying that Marchionne was in the right place at the right time - with his hand out – but, really? Let’s not forget that Fiat did not spend one bit of substantial money on the assets of Chrysler for an entire year after the deal was consummated before having to scrape some cash together in a good faith gesture of intent. And the sum total of Fiat’s “investment” in Chrysler after six years? In the neighborhood of $6 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, I will grant Marchionne the “genius” moniker in this one area, because in fact he is a genius at manipulating money, especially other people’s money, to his benefit. In case you need some perspective in all of this, the Jeep brand alone is easily worth $6 billion. Yeah, Marchionne is a genius all right. He flat-out stole Chrysler on behalf of Fiat. That statue of The Great Sergio isn’t going up in Auburn Hills as first planned, it’s going up in Turin, because Fiat was a failed enterprise and still is, and without Chrysler’s money-generating machine the company would have simply ceased to exist. And, in case you're wondering, there isn’t enough cash in Ferrari to keep the extended Fiat family in the lifestyle they’ve grown accustomed to. It’s no secret that the Fiat family had been out of ideas for a long time and that if it weren’t for Sergio’s financial acumen/skullduggery, they’d be wandering around Italy with their hands out. So there’s that.

2. There will be a litany of sales figures and prodigious accomplishments that Marchionne and his espresso-fueled minions will dutifully take credit for. And it will be flat-out fiction too. There will be oh so much more to the canonization of The Great Sergio that will take place out in Auburn Hills on Tuesday, and it will revolve around the fact that he and his compatriots are product geniuses. Let me remind everyone again that every single product of note that has spurred Fiat-Chrysler’s latest run of profitability and sales success was either already baked or locked-in by the True Believers toiling away in Auburn Hills long before Marchionne and his posse set up camp. Let me say that again, every single product of note was in place long before The Great Sergio even got to Auburn Hills. Yet he and his minions started taking credit for those existing product programs almost the moment their Prada loafers entered the building. It didn’t take a genius to milk the Jeep and Ram trucks for all they were worth, believe me. And the Fiat-Chrysler dealers who are quick to throw themselves at the feet of The Great Sergio for a chance to bathe in his aura because they’re making serious money for the first time in years ought to do some serious soul searching about giving credit where credit is due. Here’s a clue: It wasn’t the Italians, I can assure you.

3. Speaking of those same dealers, how about the promises Marchionne made to the company’s dealers when he encouraged them to invest between $1-$2 million on brick and mortar to build Fiat showrooms because it would be “the small car that would transform the U.S. market?” The grim reality? The notion that Fiat dealers would easily be selling 50,000 cars per year is fading fast. Last year it was 43,000 and guess what? The trend line isn’t going up. But then again, how could it? Fiat dealers are mired in a one-trick-pony quagmire of one (and a half) models to sell and with nowhere else to go with it because Sergio didn’t deliver on his grandiose promises. He promised that by investing in a Fiat franchise it would be the gateway to untold riches for these dealers because by doing so they would have first crack at selling the vaunted Alfa Romeo brand in the U.S., and that they would be swimming in profits because he was boldly (and ridiculously, I might add) projecting 75,000 in Alfa sales by 2012. How did that work out? Anyone? Bueller? Dealers are dying while trying to make a living off of the miniscule grosses that barely register from selling the 500 and 500L. And those Alfa Romeo profits they were supposed to be swimming in? It has been a non-starter of majestic proportion. Marchionne will unveil his fourth plan – count ‘em, fourth - in five years for the Alfa Romeo brand at the event tomorrow. And guess what? He will announce that Alfa Romeo will be a separate brand and that those same dealers will have to pony up even more for the privilege of selling them. I find it difficult to generate much sympathy for Fiat dealers at this point. After all, if you’re still drinking from the Marchionne bullshit trough at this point, you get what you deserve.

4. And what about Chrysler? It’s clear that at tomorrow’s meeting you won’t hear The Great Sergio admitting to abject failure when it comes to the Chrysler brand. Let’s face it, folks, Chrysler as a brand is an also-ran in the market. Despite flashy ads from Eminem and Clint Eastwood by Olivier “I’m a genius just ask me” Francois, Marchionne’s chief marketing minion, the Chrysler 300 is basking in rental duty and the 200 is present and accounted for, and that’s it. And those dealers counting on the new 200 to make things right overnight ought to do even more soul searching, because cracking one of the toughest segments in the market is going to take a long, long time, even if you give them away, as seems to be the Chrysler retail plan of late. No, you won’t hear a thing about this, except maybe Marchionne promising that the new 200 will be a slam-dunk success. As if. The thing is Marchionne doesn’t have a frickin’ clue as to what to do with Chrysler. Why? Because for all of Marchionne’s overblown work habits, he and his minions are fundamentally lazy, and it’s much easier to come up with gold-plated variations for Jeep and Ram truck than it is to actually sell passenger cars in the market with a modicum of profitability.

Oh, there’s more, those were just the high hard ones.

As for the rest of it, The Great Sergio will delineate much of his “plan” around growing the company, and this is likely where it will get murky and the grandiose promises will start to fly again.

Dodge will be formally turned into the nostalgia-rod brand, because even though it’s a niche that’s declining with the aging enthusiasts who desire that kind of product, it’s at least a niche that is easily defined.

He will announce that he will throw a ton of money at Alfa Romeo, of course – money that was printed from the selling of Jeeps and Ram trucks in case you need to be reminded – and, because he just can’t help himself, make all kinds of promises geared first to the dealers he will be trying to extract money from and then to the media so that they will be sure to call him a genius (yet again). Except the ugly reality about Alfa Romeo is that even if Marchionne earmarks $6 billion to the Alfa brand it will take at least a decade for it to gain any traction in the U.S. market alone. And even that’s wildly optimistic. Marchionne is hinging an awful lot on Alfa Romeo, in fact he has notions of Audi and BMW dancing in his head when it comes to Alfa (even though he denies it) and to say that this notion is simply delusional is the understatement of the year.

Here’s the High-Octane Truth about Alfa Romeo: it’s not a mass-market brand. It was never meant to be a mass-market brand and it never will be a mass-market brand. But in the end even that doesn’t much matter to The Great Sergio, when it comes right down to it. Why? I can assure you the dealers will pay for it when Marchionne’s grandiose plan for Alfa goes nowhere. It will be their fault somehow and The Great Sergio will have long since departed when the recriminations start flying.

I could go on but I will stop here. Just remember that when you read the breathless media regurgitations of The Great Sergio as he comes down from the mountaintop tomorrow with new tablets in hand to dispense his beatific wisdom on the adoring multitudes, it’s helpful to remind yourself that the latest Chrysler “miracle” had little to do with Marchionne and his espresso-fueled minions and everything to do with the men and women out in Auburn Hills – the True Believers, if you will - who suffered through one harrowing episode after another to see Chrysler emerge into the light once again.

They endured the botched takeover by Daimler, survived the complete gutting by those reprehensible lowlife mercenaries from Cerberus, and now, they have to sit by and watch as The Great Sergio takes credit for their hard work in order to prop up a moribund, miserable excuse for a car company while lining the pockets of the leisure class family that still has a hand in the enterprise.

“Oh, what a world, what a world,” the Wicked Witch of the West once famously said.

I concur.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.