The Italian car company will get a 35 percent ownership stake in Chrysler and an opportunity to bring its Fiat and Alfa Romeo brands back to the United States through Chrysler’s dealership network.

Chrysler has also been a financial sinkhole since it was acquired two years ago by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

Despite cutting tens of thousands of jobs and enough production capacity to build 1.2 million vehicles a year, Chrysler has been burning through more than $1 billion in cash a month because of its rapidly deteriorating sales, which plummeted 30 percent last year. Chrysler suspended investment in most new products while it looked for a partner.

Before striking a deal with Fiat, it held discussions about joining the Nissan-Renault alliance and merging with General Motors.

“Chrysler’s been looking at multiple solutions, and been quite erratic,” Erich Merkle, an independent auto analyst, told The Times. “But given the times that we’re confronted with, there’s a lot of creative thinking going on right now.”

Wow...the Italian economy is in shambles just like it is here...Maybe worse. I really dont know what to think about this deal.