Chrysler: No plans to sell stamping business

Chrysler has no plans to sell its stamping operations once it begins to conduct business under the private ownership of Cerberus Capital Management, a senior executive said Monday.

"We're not looking at anything," Frank Ewasyshyn, Chrysler's senior manufacturing executive, told reporters at a ceremony to mark the start of production of the automaker's new Sebring convertible.

The $7.4 billion sale of Chrysler to Cerberus from its German parent Daimler (Charts) announced last month sparked immediate speculation about how the private equity firm would restructure the automaker's loss-making operations.

The dog that ate Detroit
Chrysler, which faces crucial contract talks with the United Auto Workers union, has said Cerberus has no immediate plans for cost cutting beyond a previously announced turnaround plan for the struggling automaker.

"I think we're staying in the stamping business," Ewasyshyn told reporters. "It's a big part of our business. It's an operation that makes money for us."

Chrysler's Sebring convertible is being assembled at the automaker's Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, one of the Chrysler facilities retooled last year under a $500 million investment program intended to boost productivity.

A share of that investment also went to Chrysler's nearby Sterling Heights Stamping Plant. Ewasyshyn said that investment underscored Chrysler's commitment to its stamping business.

In addition to the Sebring convertible, Chrysler's Sterling Heights Assembly Plant also makes the Sebring Sedan and the Dodge Avenger. It was designed with the capacity to add a fourth model later if Chrysler opted to do so.

Chrysler's U.S. unit sales were down about 1 percent in the first five months of this year, after falling 7 percent in 2006.

The automaker, which posted an operating loss of $2 billion in the first quarter of this year, is cutting 13,000 jobs in an effort to return to profitability by 2008.