Chrysler VP of Communications, Jason Vines, was back on WDIV this morning, correcting his prior general-ities made about the new AutoDepot under Nardelli (you can catch the video at Jalopnik again, here).

Vines gives a huge middle finger to the press (remember, it’s the press and SEC’s fault that public companies struggle, especially in the auto industry) and asserts the advantages of privatization. Nardelli can make a buck a year (before taxes) until the turnaround, which some are reporting, or he can make a whopping $100k (we hear his golden parachute needs a new lining). Vines doesn’t care that you care and goes on to state that what Chrysler decides to dole out to management is a “mundane detail.” Chrysler can totally go out and stab hobos on weekends, just for kicks. You’ll never know. It’s this attitude that inspires confidence in the LBO boom.

Word is that Chrysler has put a new (it’s not a pentagram, damnit!) pentagonal thingie on its walls and that, weather permitting, is having an “employee celebration” at 12:45pm. The celebration marks the fact that Chrysler employees get to keep their jobs for a brief period to avoid a PR disaster until Cerberus gets ornery and starts cutting the fat.

If anyone has any dirt on the “celebration,” drop a comment or tip at *tips at dealbreaker dot com*.

Chrysler PR Main Man Jason Vines Corrects Self, New CEO Bob Nardelli’s Resume [Jalopnik]

Newly named Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli can’t disguise his tenure at Home Depot, where he received ridiculous pay and a ridiculous golden parachute for helping the company tank. Orange smocks are just too conspicuous. What Nardelli can cover-up, however, is his stint at GE, especially in Detroit, where most people don’t know the difference between all things General.

From Jalopnik, the cover-up starts with Chrysler’s PR man Jason Vines, who told local Detroit affiliate WDIV about Nardelli’s glorious stint at GM this morning (you can watch the video here). Vines then went on to detail the remarkable career of Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of the Dodgers. Soon, no one will know the real story, and Chrysler will emerge as the dominant American automaker in a short 100 years.

LaSorda told Chrysler employees in a statement on Friday after officially eaten by a three-headed dog, “One hundred years from now, people will look back on this day as the rebirth of a truly great company.” Never let it be said that American automakers are short sighted. Those 100 year plans are sure to excite shareholders. Odds are that, in its current state, it will be remarkable if people have something to refer to as “Chrysler” in 100 years.

Chrysler PR Main Jason Vines Confuses Two Generals [Jalopnik]
LaSorda praises ‘rebirth of a truly great company’ [Freep.com]

Private equity’s scorching hot these days and the Cerberus is a pretty, pretty, pretty badass name, so it should stand to reason that all you M.B.A.’s, bloggers and small mouth bass fisherman alike should want to go to work for Cerberus Capital Management. And why shouldn’t you? The three-headed dog’s got $26 billion in capital, counts Dan Quayle as a spokesman emeritus, and owns Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC, a manufacturer and distributor of guns based in Windham, Maine. Who are you kidding? You’ve been dreaming about this for years. The idea that one day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day, but one day, you will go to work for Stephen Feinberg is all that keeps you going in this god forsaken world. You’re hanging on by a thread and that thread is whispering, “Cerberus.” We feel you. We are you.

Unfortunately, Deal Journal, because their goal in life is to crush dreams and facilitate suicides, reports that your dream is never going to happen. Since November 2006, CCM has hired only 110 people, according to operations chief W. Grant Gregory, from 2,500 interviews. A 4.4% hiring rate from among just those asked to come in, not the other 100k trying to belay themselves down the Park Ave. headquarters and into a side window.

The phenobarbital-vodka punch and plastic bags are on us.

MBAs Take Note: Your Odds of Landing at Cerberus are Slim [Deal Journal]

Hell is not a place that is usually invoked in discussing corporate mergers and acquisitions. But it has come up frequently in discussions of the unwinding merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler. When news of the sale of the Chrysler unit to a private equity fund broke, The Wall Street Journal’s DealBook compared the 1999 merger to the “Deals from Hell” discussed in a book of that title from Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The phrase also made it into the title of a Newsweek article by business columnist Allan Sloan.

“This is definitely in the hunt for being one of the all-time deals from hell,” said Bruner tells Sloan.

One of the inspirations for all this is the name of the private equity firm acquiring Chrysler—Cerebus. The firm takes its name from the three-headed dog said to guard the gates of Hades in Greek and Roman mythology. Another, however, seems to be the hellish negative return the Germans appear to have received for their purchase of Chrysler. The company then known as Daimler-Benz paid $36 billion to acquire the company, and took on enormous unfunded health care and pension costs—usually called “legacy costs”—as part of the deal. Last week Daimler cut a deal in which it will wind up paying the new owners to take it off their hands.

Fees tend to make everyone happy, especially the leaches at the receiving end of them. It’s even more fun when you can collect them by helping one company who made 36 billion mistakes nine years ago pay another company to take the unwanted child that never should’ve been carried to term off its hands. Deal Journal reports that there are 600 people involved in the DaimlerChrsyler proceedings.

The Cerberus team was led by the firm’s founder, Stephen Feinberg, and Lenard Tessler, who runs its leveraged buyout arm, another person said. At Daimler, the point people on the deal besides, of course, Dr. Z — the automaker’s chief, Dieter Zetsche — were Chrysler head Tom Lasorda, and Paul Knauss, who oversees auto lender Chrysler Financial.

The bankers that have surfaced so far as having some role on the deal include J.P. Morgan, which advised Daimler, as well as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns, which helped finance it. The law firms working on the deal include Shearman & Sterling, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Schulte Roth & Zabel, which has risen to riches counseling Cerberus, according to this post from our colleagues over at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog yesterday. (Considering how competitive the M&A world is, it wouldn’t surprise us if more advisers surface.)

The Chrysler Deal Making Army [Deal Journal]

Cerberus Capital Management is pulling out of talks to buy bankrupt autoparts maker Delphi Corp, Jalopnik’s Ray Wert reports this morning. The private equity group is still interested in buying Delphi but not until after it emerges from Chapter 11. Earlier this week it had been reported that talks between Cerberus and Delphi’s management had hit a “snag.” Delphi has been having trouble with the United Auto Workers union, which earlier this week announced it was rejecting plans for wage cuts for new workers at the company.

From Jalopnik:

That’s right, the private money-making fund is withdrawing from a deal to buy Delphi Corp. and help pull the little bugger out of Chapter 11 reorganization. Delphi claims Cerberus is pulling out over differences over Delphi’s future value. Cerberus claims — well, they ain’t claiming anything other than that they might still play with Delphi when it finally does leave Chapter 11 — but one wonders whether the deal’s being killed because of an inability for Cerberus to get concessions out of the UAW, inflexibility and ineffectiveness of management or because they’re saving their bank for the big prize — the Chrysler Group. Who knows?

A quick conversation over text-messaging to a DealBreaker source in who is familiar with the Chrysler buyout bidding agrees with Jalopnik’s speculation—Cerberus might not want to rile the union with tough talk at Delphi at a time when it is aiming to buy Chrysler, a deal that will most likely require union support. The UAW has already been flexing its muscles in sale of Chrysler, suggesting that perhaps Chrysler should remain under the Daimler umbrella.

Update:Delphi confirms that Cerberus is out.

The Delphi Rhythm Method: Cerberus Pulls Out Early [Jalopnik]

This is getting exciting! Kirk Kerkorian’s investment company, Tracinda, made a $4.5 billion cash bid for the Chrysler Group today, according to reports. This comes fast on the heals of three other headline making Chrysler stories:

• that Daimler-Chrysler’s big German boss, CEO Dieter Zetsche, confirmed the Chrylser group was for sale,
• that bids had been submitted by Blackstone, Cerebrus and Canadaian automanufacturer Magna International,
• and that JP Morgan was putting the deal on a fast track, reviewing the bids beginning this week and hoped to have selected a winner by month’s end.

Well, you can wipe those off the whiteboards, kids, because the headline is going to Kerkorian’s bid. Not only is it a cash deal, he’s also got the backing of both the United Auto Workers and Chrysler senior management.

Prior to this announcement it was widely rumored that Magna might have the strongest bid, since it was thought to be the most likely bidder to keep the Chrysler relatively intact and gain the cooperation of unions. But Kerkorian’s offer now seems the front-runner. In fact, it seems so strong that it might entirely change the game.

“You can bet the boys down at Blackstone and Cerebus are cancelling their Easter weekend plans,” a source who consults for many private equity groups told DealBreaker. “Time to rewrite the bids.”

Kerkorian has a long, storied history with Chrysler. In the mid-nineties he attempted to takeover the company in an alliance with Lee Iacocca. He remained one of the largest single shareholders in the car company until it merger with Daimler-Benz in 1998. At the time—and to this day—many saw Kerkorian’s handiwork behind the deal.

In the nineties Kerkorian was often represented as a “corporate raider” and many feared he wanted to own Chrysler only to destroy it, or at least disassemble the company and slice of its less profitable divisions and product lines. These days many fear that the private equity bidders have similar plans, and Kerkorian seems to be promising to keep the company intact.

“Can KirkKerk actually be the white knight he always claims he is and save Chrysler from the ‘merger of equals’ he initially drove them to? Stay tuned for the next episode of Crazy Chrysler!” Jalopnik editor Ray Wert told DealBreaker. (Note: Ray uses phrases like “he initially drove them to” but this isn’t his fault. It is a well-known condition that car pundits cannot resist automotive puns.)

“It’s like the late 90’s all over again, only in reverse,” Ray added. (Note: Reverse. See what we mean?)

Kerkorian Offers $4.5 Billion for Chrysler [New York Times]
Tracinda’s Letters to Chrysler [pdf via New York Times]
The Official Car Pundit Drinking Game: Is The UAW In Bed With Kirk Kerkorian? [Jalopnik]
Chrysler sale looks certain [Detroit News]

Update: The lads at Deal Journal are outdoing themselves translating the letters from Tracinda speak into a normal human language.
A sample:

The returns will not come quickly. Investors that feel the need to show “mark to market” results in their funds in relatively short time frames (just a few years) will not be willing to invest as necessary over an unusually lengthy period of time to achieve the necessary end results.
Dr. Z., why are you imperiling the future of Chrysler by playing footsie with the fast-money crowd from New York? I don’t have to live by the same rules and can be a better steward than the folks, like Cerberus, who’ve chosen the hound of Hell as their name and mascot.

Two things or , uhm, data points from D-town. The gist: despite the reported “profit” GM still sucks and Cerebus has hired a former DaimlerChrysler insider to advise it. Or, in the colorful language of Jalopnik writer Ray Wert:

Looks like Dr. Z.’s favorite scion is back in the action, as the Financial Times is reporting Wolfgang Bernhard, the restructuring expert who helped to turn around the ‘merican side of the German-American hybrid five years ago, has signed an advisory contract with Cerberus Capital Management. Wethinks that’s going to strengthen their bid just a bit, eh? Bernhard, who was chief operating officer at the Chrysler Group until he left to run V-Dub, signed the contract for a full-time role recently, according to the UK financial daily. Wow, what with their big stake in GMAC, the three-headed dog of capital management’s really getting into this whole automakin’ thing.

More Chrysler Group Sales Speculation: Bernhard’s Back On The Back Of A Three-Headed Dog [Jalopnik]