Daimler-Benz-Chrysler: Worldwide Fender Blender

There are lots of details that can strangle a $48 billion merger--different accounting practices, the need to rationalize information technology, patent ownerships--and Tom Stallkamp thought he'd worked through them all. As president of Chrysler, he had helped orchestrate the American company's merger with Germany's Daimler-Benz. But last November, as the new outfit, DaimlerChrysler, approached the date it would debut on the New York Stock Exchange, the whole thing stalled seemingly over whether the company would use American- or European-size business cards. The more tradition-bound Germans dug in their heels, not surprisingly. But the more flexible Yanks wouldn't budge either. "It got all the way up to me, and I said, 'What the hell, they're only business cards,'" Stallkamp recounts--and he chose the slightly wider European style, for novelty's sake.

By now the novelty has worn off--and with it the notion that DaimlerChrysler was a merger of equals. Just a year ago, the CEOs of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler Corp.--Jurgen Schrempp and Bob Eaton, respectively--made the surprise announcement that their two companies were going to combine. But Eaton, the executive who presided over Chrysler's transformation into America's hottest car company, ceded too much authority too early, giving the Germans an advantage in the high-stakes game of musical chairs that happens when two huge corporations marry.

It's no surprise that Schrempp is running the show. What is surprising is the way in which he is putting the two organizations together: forcing head-on confrontations, with the survivors left to run the company. "Most mergers have this deadly wish for harmony," says Schrempp. "We put the tough issues up front."

This deal probably means a lot more to the world than money and ego. The largest industrial merger in history is a test of whether globalization can really bring together the leading capitalists of Europe and the U.S. Can fastidious Germans join with freewheeling Americans and teach the Japanese a lesson or two? Although only the world's fourth largest carmaker, DaimlerChrysler's $95 billion market capitalization looms over General Motors, and the company is sitting on $22 billion in cash. Its 440,000 employees make everything from cars and trucks to Airbuses, trains and ocean-liner engines.

Schrempp knows this is risky, because mergers often fail, and big ones fail more often. So DaimlerChrysler is dancing a transoceanic jitterbug that is testing the limits of corporate convention. German and American bosses are fusing their cultures on napkins in airport lounges and in the conference rooms of five-star hotels. The transatlantic traffic became so heavy that DaimlerChrysler, which owns 20% of Airbus, bought an A320 and outfitted it like an NBA charter so its executives could get some sleep between meetings. The 53-seat plane (an A320 normally has 150 seats) flies four weekly round trips between Stuttgart, Germany, and Auburn Hills, Mich.

All that jetlagged jawboning in the wrong language is taking its toll on top managers. The stress has already led to some marital de-mergers, including Schrempp's. The chain-smoking CEO is so determined to make DaimlerChrysler the world's No. 1 transportation-services company that he let his 35-year marriage collapse, because, as he told the German tabloid Bild last month, "the merger means more to me than anything in the world."