[anamax]

> To be fair, _all_ of them would have closed without the massive government bailout.

There was at least one offer to buy Chrysler (from Penske). I'd be surprised if there weren't any offers to buy GM.

Of course, those offers involved real bankruptcy. The resulting companies wouldn't have kept the UAW contracts and pension obligations and they wouldn't have been able to keep the tax-loss carry-forwards either.

They'd have kept dealers based (more) on economics instead of political pull.

And, the bond holders would have gotten their cut first.

GM makes sense at the right expense point.

[mudetroit]

I believe the Penske bid was actually to buy the Saturn brand from GM, not Chrysler. Could be wrong, but buying a company the size of GM at the time of the bailout would still have been a very difficult proposition.

[anamax]

> I believe the Penske bid was actually to buy the Saturn brand from GM,

Okay.

> buying a company the size of GM at the time of the bailout would still have been a very difficult proposition.

As you point out above, GM could have been sold in parts. (Some of the brands and models are independent of the rest.)

Basically it would have been a no-reserve auction with the money going to the bondholders. (They'd have taken a loss, but wouldn't have lost everything.) The winning bid is based on what folks are willing to pay, not what someone thinks GM is worth, book value, etc.

There's actually a lot of money available for such deals. Yes, 10s of billions and hundreds for "special" deals.