MetaCars

Reports have surfaced this week that CEO of Fiat-Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, is planning a counterstrike against fellow megalomaniacal automotive honcho Ferdinand Piech’s purchase of a stake in Suzuki.  The two men are currently locked in a battle to scoop up an inexplicably large number of brands, fans of which can expect to be steadily debased and stripped of individual identity in the decades to come.

Although Piech – a legendary womaniser, and the man in charge of developing the fearsome Porsche 917 and Audi Quattro S1 – has been collecting marques since the 1990s, he now faces stiff competition from the sweater-wearing accountant.  “Fiat’s relaunch of Abarth was only the first step in this strategy,” said a source who requested confidentiality because he could.  “Why else do you think Sergio was so keen to get his hands on Opel and Vauxhall?  I mean, it’s not like there’s any value in their products.”

A similar line of thinking is understood to underpin Fiat’s takeover of Chrysler.  However, not content with the three ready-made brands the company came with, Marchionne recently decided to split Ram off from Dodge, a move that continues to make no sense to anyone except himself.  Continuing in a similar vein, he is now envisaging selling rebadged Chryslers as Lancias, since the demographics and buyer profiles for these two brands are “a perfect fit”.  (No, really, he is.)

However, as impressive as these efforts to maximise the key investor metric of “Branding Confusion” are, MetaCars understands they are merely a prelude to more ambitious moves.  “People forget all of the brand names that came with our takeover of Chrysler,” the source said.  “With DeSoto, Imperial, Plymouth and AMC, there’s enormous potential to resurrect a whole bunch of marques that died for good reason in the first place.  Plus, we hear that Saab is on Swedish eBay for 3 kronor.”

The race to gather a vast array of brands, in a manner akin to amassing the world’s most expensive stamp collection, has prompted mostly favourable comment from industry analysts.  “This is a very interesting development,” said Gavin Klueless at UBS.  “A lot of effort clearly went into the PowerPoint slides explaining it.  Did you catch the font type they used?  Lucida was it?”

Meanwhile, former GM CEO Rick Wagoner emerged out of exile from polite society to offer his perspective on the wisdom of a multi-brand strategy.  “I think this is a very wise approach,” the discredited executive said.  “The distraction of multiple brands was a key element in helping me avoid ongoing responsibility for the clusterfuck I helped create.”