Lacking the business acumen of big-buck bankers I never saw it coming: Cerberus announced August 5 that Robert Nardelli would be the CEO of the newly solo Chrysler Corporation. And I’m not the only one. Analyst John Casesa of Casesa Shapiro wrote in Automotive News (8/6/07) a piece titled, “Look for a hard-nosed Chrysler board” and referenced “the presumed chairman, former Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard.” Yes, John Casesa was wrong too.

Bernhard, who’s been bounced around the top ranks of some sizable automakers the last few years, clearly has that “hard-nosed” air. Dodge is an –in-your-face car company and Bernhard’s an in-your-face kind of guy. What other car exec would ride into a major auto show on a Viper-powered motorcycle?

Nardelli comes most recently from nuts-and-bolts…CEO of the Home Depot. I consider Home Depot a retailer. In the car biz retailer has another name: Dealer. Chrysler needs to come up with the good product--cars like the 300, PT Cruiser and the Jeep JT “concept” –for the dealers to sell. Can Nardelli do that?

At Home Depot Nardelli doubled revenue in six years, much of it by opening more stores. More stores is something Chrysler doesn’t need. Home Depot didn’t have $19 billion in pension/retirement costs nor as many competitors either.

But Nardelli, who gets a rumored salary of a buck a year, wasn’t liked by Home Depot shareholders. Money books put last year’s earnings at $38 million and he would not answer questions at a May 2006 meeting. He was gone in January 2007 with a severance package that was a little over 210 million dollars and the stock price was no higher than when he started. In the words of an acquaintance, “the guy’s a crook. Anybody who takes that much away on essentially no investor return is a crook.”

So depending on your point of view, Chrysler has a crook or a savior running it. After last year’s loss of 680 million, give or take, the investors probably won’t give Nardelli more than a year to fix it. And the car biz runs considerably more lead time than new bricks and pipe.

Most recent Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda is bumped to President and Vice Chairman but playing nice; hopefully his “turnaround” plan to make Chrysler profitable again in 2008 will work and he’ll get credit. Chrysler COO Eric Ridenour is leaving, no reason given.

Nardelli was quoted on a finance web page as “excited to be part of a team focused on re-establishing Chrysler as a standalone industry leader, with a renewed focus on meeting the needs of the customer.” Since customer satisfaction went through the floor while he was cutting costs at Home Depot I’m not holding my breath.

But if he and LaSorda can get Bernhard back as the head product guy (like GM’s Bob Lutz, just younger) they have a chance.