The Sad Emblem of American Industry, the Jeep: Fiat Chrysler looks at selling Jeep to Great Wall Motors

And I'm not thrilled about it.

The original, or almost the original. An abandoned M38 in rural North Dakota, a vehicle basically identical to the CJ2A and the immediate descendant of the Jeeps of World War Two.

I have a Jeep. It's the third one I've owned.

But not one of them was made by the same manufacturer.

My first was military M38A1.  It was made by Kaiser.

My second was a 1946 CJ2A.  It was a Willys.

My third, and current Jeep, is a Chrysler.

Now, we learn, Fiat Chrysler is pondering selling the Jeep line, which is doing well, to Great Wall Motors, a Chinese automobile maker.

Don't do it Fiat.

One of those silly little cars that Fiat is known for.

Jeeps were the original vehicle in their class and, in the US, they only survivor in that class.  Once populated with rivals, some very good rivals (oh, Toyota Land Cruiser, where are thou?), its' outlasted hem all as it stayed true to its original off the track form. The others morphed into bigger family trucksters, or weenie pathetic SUVs.  Not the Jeep.

And that's how the Jeep has managed to endure being traded around like a prized marble from maker to maker as its owners became troubled.  Willys, Kaiser, American Motors, Chrysler-Fiat.  And now, potentially, Great Wall Motors.

Frankly, the entire Chrysler episode worried me in the first place.  Not because I dislike Chrysler's, I like them, or rather I like Dodge.  No, because Chrysler has been in trouble ever since the  Cold War ended.  And as part of that the Chrysler brand has been tossed around a fair amount itself, going through a Daimler ownership on to an American holding company and then on to that maker of silly little Italian cars.  Fortunately, all those holders have avoided messing with Jeep, and messing much with Dodge, other than the Daimler attempt to put European diesels in Dodge vans, a Germanic flight of fancy that worked out about as well as Operation Barbarossa.

Now Fiat, which presumably doesn't really completely grasp its American market, or maybe doesn't care, is pondering selling Jeep to Great Wall, which certainly doesn't.

Jeep won't survive Great Wall.

Jeep is a red blooded American vehicle and, quite frankly, only soccer moms in New Jersey track homes are going to buy a Chinese Jeep.

The whole thing, really, is sadly symbolic of American industry in general, or maybe the United States in general.  From the arsenal of democracy, to a major industrial power with a strong rural base, to an anemic also ran that grows acres of safe blue grass for cubicle dweller dog walkers who buy, and must buy, everything from a rising non democratic Asian giant and rival.

A sad state of affairs.