Fiat-Opel
Following an agreement on April 30 to take an initial 20% stake in US group Chrysler, rising to 35%, Fiat had confirmed it also wanted to take over General Motors' (GM) European business, which included Opel and Vauxhall. Mr. Marchionne, who successfully returned Fiat to profit in 2006 after six years of losses, had long maintained that in the future carmakers will need to sell more than six million vehicles a year to survive. Moreover, it is not just the absolute number of cars that matters, but the volume associated with each architecture/platform. Introduction On May 20, Mr. Marchionne presented in Berlin an ambitious, 46-page plan with Fiat’s bid for GM Europe. The group emerging from the merger would be Europe's second-largest automaker next to Volkswagen. And when Fiat's plan to acquire a stake in Chrysler materializes, the resulting group would become the world's second-largest car company next to Toyota. In a section titled "Vision," the plan lists as one of its goals "surviving as one of five or six remaining providers in the global automobile market. The Automotive Industry In 2007, a total of 71.