In 2009, Barack Obama picked Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne to take over Chrysler — for free. The terms? Import the 40 MPG Fiat 500 in order to educate Detroit’s heathens on how to make a fuel-efficient small car.
Two years later, Marchionne is poised to announce that Fiat will export a Detroit-made Maserati SUV to the world.
The extraordinary turnabout is a testimony to Marchionne’s smarts and Obama’s green ideological blindness. The Fiat owner has learned that Detroit makes the best trucks in the world — so good, in fact, that the Chrysler Cherokee will be the platform for the iconic Maserati brand as it exports big-margin SUVs around the globe (taking on Porsche’s international smash hit, the Cayenne SUV).
Meanwhile, Fiat cannot make Obama’s little 500 affordably in the U.S. with UAW labor. It is assembled in Mexico. The Maserati truck — a vehicle class publicly despised by Obama — will be built right in downtown Detroit employing UAW workers, the very workers Obama claims to represent.
Oh, the irony.
“It’s more jobs for America,” thrilled UAW President Bob King on the news that the Maserati SUV will be a global export. “It’s more jobs for the Detroit community. It’s more jobs for Michigan and Ohio — for the whole Midwest. It’s great news.”
But if Barack Obama had his druthers, there would be no American-made Maserati SUV. There would be only Mexican-made tin cans. You can’t make this stuff up.