Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne may have succeeded in signing a deal with the Italian worker unions, yet decreasing demand in the struggling European market may still force him to take extreme measures.

And while Marchionne does not expect the situation in Europe to improve “at least until 2014", on the other side of the pond, he said that Chrysler's plants are already at full capacity, necessitating imports from the group’s factories in Canada, Mexico or Europe to satisfy a third of U.S. demand.

Therefore, as he told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, it’s a perfect opportunity for Fiat’s Italian plants to increase their production and make up for the drop in local demand by exporting models to the States.

If you have been following the news in the U.S. these past few weeks, you will have no doubt noticed that all Republican presidential candidates have attacked the Obama administration for the way it handled the auto industry bailout.

Now it's time for President Obama's campaign to fight back through a new ad that will air on television this Friday but only in Michigan, ahead of the State's Republican presidential primary next week.

The ad is named "Made in America" and touts Obama's stance on the auto bailout bill while at the same time taking a jab at the GOP and especially Mitt Romney, showing the title of his November 2008 New York Times op-ed piece, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt".

Republican presidential candidates seem to have locked in the 2009 U.S. automotive industry bailout by the federal government as a means to raise votes in the primaries.

Yet the Democrats aren’t the only ones who dismiss the Republicans’ arguments; United Auto Workers president Bob King recently accused Mitt Romney of “misleading voters” on the issue of the bailout.

"Romney is trying to rewrite history and attack President Obama and the UAW for successfully saving the auto industry," King said in a statement.

Another day, another presidential candidate of the Republican Party remembers the 2009 U.S. automotive industry bailout and declares his disdain by saying that both the country and the carmakers would be better off without it. So what else is new?

Well, Rick Santorum managed to attack not only President Barack Obama, but also his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush and “fellow” Republican candidate Mitt Romney – all during the same speech he made at the Detroit Economic Club today.

Predictably, Santorum, like Romney, said that both General Motors and Chrysler would be “alive and equally as well, or better off, than they are now," adding "the markets would have reacted to restructure it to be more competitive.”

Lawrence Tech student Colin Bonathan is a name some of our regular readers might remember.

The young designer was responsible for the exterior styling of the Ford Motor Company-endorsed 2025 Lincoln Continental concept displayed as a quarter-scale model at this year's edition of the Detroit Motor Show.

We recently revisited his portfolio and discovered a new design project that he has been working on. This time, Bonathan dreamed up a styling proposal for a Chrysler-branded luxury GT coupe named Review.

We don’t know if what we see in these computer generated images is the final design or if Bonathan is still contemplating on the details, but the styling is impressive in an elegant way.

Following on from the launch of the Lancia Ypsilon Black&Red last November, the special edition version of the Italian supermini has now put on its Chrysler logos to go on sale in the UK.

Both on the outside and inside, the new edition of the Chrysler Ypsilon subcompact hatchback sports a two-tone black and red color theme.

Each year, J.D. Power and Associates release their findings on the overall dependability of three-year old vehicles sold in the States. The 2012 Dependability Study polled some 31,000 owners of 2009 model-year vehicles measuring problems they experienced in the past 12 months.

To understand the numbers you see listed below, the "overall dependability" is determined by the level of problems experienced per 100 vehicles (PP100), with a lower score translating to higher quality.

In this year's study, J.D. Powers found that overall vehicle dependability improved substantially as the industry average was 132 problems per 100 vehicles, representing a 13 percent improvement from last year (151 PP100), while it's also the lowest problem rate since the survey began in 1990.

The automotive industry is once again involved in politics and more specifically, this year’s presidential elections. This time it’s Republican candidate former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, who attacked President Barack Obama’s handling of the 2009 bailout.

In an op-ed published today at the Detroit News, Romney criticizes Obama of “instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, he rewarded them”.

Romney stated that the companies should have entered and then exited bankruptcy, but that “by the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.”

With each new generation of the Chrysler Group's Viper sports car comes a new interpretation of the snake logo and the same holds true for the next model that will be officially unveiled at the 2012 New York Auto Show in April.

Following last month's release of the black and white teaser of the new Viper, which will be marketed under the SRT brand instead of Dodge, the Detroit automaker has now revealed the new and more sinister looking "venomous" logo nicknamed "Stryker".

The Chrysler Group has issued a recall on certain Dodge Charger police vehicles from the 2011-2012 model years to address two electronic problems. The recall affects 9,688 patrol cars in the U.S.

The Detroit automaker told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that in some cars, the low beam headlamps could fail due to an overheated bulb harness connector, while in other vehicles, the ABS/ESC systems may stop functioning due to an overheated power distribution center.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any similarities between the current and the former presidents of the United States. Yet, Barack Obama and George W. Bush actually do have one thing in common: they both agree that bailing out the bankrupt U.S. car industry was the right thing to do.

Bush, whose extension of bridge loans to U.S. automakers was one of the last decisions before he left office, gave the closing address to the annual National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) convention.

The former President said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned him that, unless the administration took drastic measures, a new depression was imminent.

A 60-second spot that aired during the break in Sky TV’s Super Bowl coverage last Sunday was the opening shot in Chrysler’s new advertising campaign with which it re-launches the brand in the United Kingdom.

The commercial shows the 300C sedan cruising through Detroit and then emerging through a tunnel in the streets of London, where it is joined by the rest of the brand's UK line-up. It is very similar to this ad only now we see Chrysler's re-badged Lancia models as well.

The 57th United States presidential elections will take place on November 6, and naturally, Barack Obama is aiming for a second term. Politics being what it is, the automotive industry is pushing hard to get some things done.

One such issue is the inclusion of Japan on the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, which Obama hopes will create a free-trade zone between the U.S. and the Asia Pacific region.

Currently, apart from the United States, there are eight other countries negotiating the plan including Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. But three others want to join the talks that will be held this March in Melbourne.

Around 1,800 new jobs will be added to the Chrysler Group's Belvidere Assembly Plant by the third quarter of 2012, the company's CEO Sergio Marchionne announced on Thursday during a ceremony at the facility with Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.

Included in the 1,800 positions are close to 500 jobs that will be added to launch production of the 2013 Dodge Dart in the second quarter of the year. For this reason, the Detroit automaker will be adding a third shift to the plant, something that hasn't happened since March of 2008 when the Belvidere facility employed around 3,600 workers.

On Tuesday, January 31, U.S. President Barack Obama’s schedule included a visit to the 2012 Washington Auto Show. The White House informed automakers on a two days’ notice to bring their most fuel-efficient models to the show.

Naturally, they obliged. For example, Honda flew in the FCX Clarity from California, Kia brought the Optima hybrid and Mercedes-Benz a fuel-cell car. Carmakers also brought along their top brass to discuss green technologies with the President.

As Bloomberg reports, the problem is that Obama, who had half an hour in his disposal, ignored foreign manufacturers.

Instead, he spent most of his time with domestic brands, posing for the press with the Dodge Dart, the Chevrolet Malibu, the Ford C-MAX Energi, the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 and the Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 (not pretty fuel efficient those two, by the way…).

As part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, Mopar revealed a new limited edition version of the Chrysler 300 that will go on display at the 2012 Chicago Auto Show from February 10-19 before it arrives in dealerships this summer with a starting price of $49,700, which includes $825 for destination.

The Mopar '12 300 will be built in a limited run of 500 units, all of which are painted in a black exterior finish with bespoke Mopar appointments such as the black chrome grille and accents, tinted lights, blue pin stripes on the profile and hood, plus “Mopar 75” fender badges and a set of color matching 20-inch forged alloy wheels.

The Chrysler division's tuning and performance arm also made changes to the interior that features black leather with blue accent stitching on the seats and steering wheel, a unique Mopar shifter handle, special sill plates and badges, and matte carbon hydrographic accents on the instrument panel and center console sections.

We are eagerly anticipating the first official teaser photo of the next SRT Viper in the early morning hours of Tuesday but that's not all the Chrysler Group has in store for us this week.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of Mopar, which is the group's automobile parts and service arm, the Detroit firm will present four specially modified vehicles that will go on display at next month's 2012 Chicago Auto Show (January 10 to 19).

Only 18 months after the Chrysler Group began production of its new Pentastar V6 at its Trenton Engine Assembly Plant in Michigan, the company hit its first important milestone with the manufacturing of the one-millionth unit. The V6 is also produced at Chrysler's plant in Saltillo, Mexico.

The Detroit firm's all-aluminum 3.6-liter V6 engine made its debut on the 2010 Jeep Grand Cherokee but has since found its way under the hood of many more models.

These include the Chrysler 200, 300 and Town and Country, plus the Dodge Avenger, Challenger, Charger, Durango, Journey and Caravan, and more recently the 2012 Jeep Wrangler.

Chinese officials may be withdrawing their support for investments made by foreign automakers, but the Fiat-Chrysler Alliance is still looking for ways to increase its presence in the country.

A new report from the Detroit News says that Fiat and Chrysler are currently in "intense negotiations" with the Guangzhou Automobile Group to produce Jeep models for the local market.

The Italian automaker has already forged a joint venture with Guangzhou for the manufacturing of a new compact sedan based on the 2013 Dodge Dart, which will most likely be introduced in China at the upcoming Beijing motor show in April.

On Tuesday, the Office of the Special Inspector General charged with auditing the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which bailed out among others General Motor and the Chrysler Group, came out with a report criticizing the U.S. government for failing to implement salary caps.

To brief you up, back in 2008, the U.S. government used US$700 billion under Tarp to bailout more than 700 institutions from which seven companies stood out due to the amount of money they received and the nature of their bailouts.

The seven companies that received so-called "exceptional assistance" were General Motors, the Chrysler Group, Ally Financial (formerly GMAC, Inc.), AIG, Bank of America, Chrysler Financial Services and Citigroup.

Although using taxpayers’ money to bailout privately owned institutions was an issue debated for a long time, as it turns out, saving those companies and thousands of American jobs was not the only issue on hand.