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DoJ fines Japanese parts firms $740M in massive automotive price-fixing scandal

Nine Japanese suppliers have pleaded guilty in US court over charges of price fixing in the automotive parts industry, resulting in the Department of Justice doling out a total of $740 million of fines, according to a report from Bloomberg. The scandal, which has resulted in General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler spending up to $5 billion on inflated parts and driving up prices on 25 million vehicles has sent the DoJ hustling into investigations. "The conduct this investigation uncovered involved more than a dozen separate conspiracies aimed at the U.S. economy," Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured above) said during yesterday's press conference.
As the investigation stands, the DoJ has issued $1.6 billion in fines against 20 companies and 21 individual executives, with 17 of the execs headed to prison. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Hammond said, "The breadth of the conspiracies brought to light today are as egregious as they are pervasive. They involve more than a dozen separate conspiracies operating independently but all sharing in common that they targeted US automotive manufacturers."
Big-name suppliers indicted in the investigation include Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Hitachi Automotive and Mitsuba Corporation. A list of fines and other corporations named in the investigation is available at Bloomberg.

Fiat pondering swallowing rest of Chrysler, US IPO

At the moment, Fiat is in court with the United Auto Workers, waiting for the justice system to provide some guidance on a fair price for 41.5-percent of Chrysler it doesn't own. Fiat owns 58.5 percent of the company and wishes to buy the remainder, which is owned by the union's VEBA retiree trust, but the Italian company and the UAW are on different sides of the galaxy when it comes to assigning a fair price to that outstanding stake.
Naturally, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne is considering his options. A new report in the The Wall Street Journal says one of the scenarios being considered now is - depending on the outcome of the court case - to purchase the 41.5-percent stake and then issue an IPO to recoup some of the cost. About two months ago, Marchionne put the odds of an IPO for a wholly combined Fiat/Chrysler at 50 percent. Even with the WSJ report, it's not clear if those odds have changed.
The current company structure leaves a lot of options as to how a potential IPO could be issued, but it's said that Marchionne is against it, preferring "to be one company," under Fiat, indivisible. If Fiat is finally able to purchase all of the Pentastar, it would get access to Chrysler's war chest, pegged at $11.9 billion at the end of Q3 in 2012, and that money can't come soon enough for a brand taking a beating in Europe and delaying product over cash concerns.

SRT belatedly claims Plymouth Prowler as one of its own

Before Chrysler had Street and Racing Technology, it had Performance Vehicle Operations. What the two entities have in common, before SRT became its own brand, of course, is that each was created to take Chrysler and Dodge (and Plymouth, before it was unceremoniously killed off) vehicles to the next level of style and performance.
We'll leave the question of whether or not the old Plymouth (and later Chrysler) Prowler was ultimately a stylish, performance-oriented car to you, but the boys and girls currently leading the SRT charge at the Pentastar headquarters are keen to accept the retro-rod into the fold.
According to the automaker, all of SRT's current high-performance models owe a debt of gratitude to the old Prowler, due mostly to that car's use of lightweight bits and pieces and innovative construction techniques. If nothing else, the fact that the Prowler's frame is "the largest machined automotive part in history" is pretty cool. Read all the details here.