Words By Dionysis Nanos
Last week we looked at the first part of our 6 Worst Merger special. Mind you the first three were bad, but this time around we’re looking at the absolute worst; messy deals and terrible agreements that lead to some below below-average cars. Convinced you that this time it’s going to be bad? Let’s have a look at our top three then (or not “top”, considering how you look at things).
3. Daimler-Chrysler
Drove like an old E-Class, felt like a failure (still like it though…)
Oh what a different time 1998 was, or to be more specific what a different time May 1998 was. The AOL-Time Warner merger was two years away and Hollywood Hogan was WCW World Champion (again..) after defeating Randy Savage on Nitro after Spring Stampede. But you don’t care about that, since May 1998 was also the time when Daimler and Chrysler decided to join forces and become one big happy family… only that’s where the dreaming stops. The 38 billion dollar deal that would have given Daimler a strong foothold in the US market and Chrysler much needed cash, since they were on the edge of collapse (not something odd there I know), ended up being one of the worst business deals in general business history. See, quickly it became apparent that Daimler wasn’t interested in having a partner but rather a new subsidiary, as they gave Chrysler their old leftovers and told them to make new cars, as they gave them the first SLK and the W210 E-Class and went “yeah.. you’re going to make your whole range out of these. Bye. Love you” and promptly went to never care again. Investors of the two companies weren’t pleased with one another either and went back and forth with lawsuits until 2007 when the party reached an abrupt end. Daimler sold Chrysler for a loss, before the latter got bailed out by the government for the the hundredth time in 20 years. Thirteen years after that situation ended, Mercedes is thriving and once again Chrysler is struggling, hopefully less under the wings of Peugeot-Citroen…
2. Renault-Nissan
I hate you…. I hate everything about you and what you stand for….
Here at Motordiction we haven’t hidden the fact that we don’t like the current crop of Nissans, and by current crop I mean everything that’s been on sale since 2003. See, once upon a time Nissan made legendary cars that were fun but also reliable, see the Datsun 240Z the Nissan 200ZX or even the early Almeras and Primeras in Europe and the equivalent American Nissan Sentras and Maximas. And then, disaster. In 1999, the devil himself Carlos Ghosn made a rather odd deal between Renault and Nissan, where Renault owned part of Nissan and Nissan owned part of Renault. So here we have a French car maker with a bad reputation for reliability buying a Japanese car maker with some economic problems that, up to that point at least, made some good cars. And instead of Renault learning from Nissan and making some decent cars the opposite happened! Nissan went full Renault and all of a sudden the quality went lower and lower, culminating in disasters like the Nissan Pulsar, or the Nissan Murano and Pathfinder and of course the Juke and the God-hating, substance-death-causing Nissan Qashqai. Nissan isn’t looking like it’s getting better any time soon but there have been cracks in its relationship with Renault lately. We can only hope…
1. GM-Saab
One of the victims…
Of course Saab and GM’s toxic marriage was going to be number one, in what was a professional mess of corporate politics and lots and lots of greed. Let’s start with a little history lesson. In 1989 GM bought a share in what was then Saab-Scania, in an effort to get some traction in the European luxury car market, and in 1999 Saab became a fully owned GM subsidiary in a move that’s quite similar to a sheep going to the slaughterhouse. On paper it should have worked, as with the acquisition of Saab, GM would get its much wanted share of the European market and Saab would get access to GM’s technology. Problem is, that 1) GM’s technology wasn’t that good to begin with, if the countless reliability problems of all sorts and on all brands are something to go on and 2) GM wanted Saab to make rebadged garbage and not actual cars, something that gave us such nightmares like the Subaru Impreza mutation that was the Saab 9-2x and the Chevy Trailblazer derived Saab 9-7x. The result of almost 10 years of GM’s dictatorship meant that by the time Saab got sold off in 2009 it was left with no core audience, as no one wanted a posh Opel/Vauxhall or Subaru, no money and no future. By the time Spyker bought the company and the new Saab 9-5 hit the scene it was already too late. Saab folded in 2014, with its remains being bought by a Chinese company that are currently trying to make an electric car out of the Saab 9-3, a car which which stubbornly refuses to die and that we’ll cover on another article….
These then are the absolute worst mergers in the car world, and really they serve a purpose since they are valuable lessons for any business deal and more so for every car-related business deal. Nevertheless, as far as low points go you can’t go any lower than these six. Or can you….