It's too early to be able to judge the value of the deal -- the contract's fine print hasn’t even been agreed yet -- but the loss absorbed by Germany's leading car manufacturer in its handover of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management amounts to a multimillion-euro tuition in the school of hard knocks.

The cost of the nine-year lesson in company mergers can be estimated as a rough addition problem: Daimler-Benz, under then-CEO Jürgen Schrempp, paid $36 billion (€27 billion) for a takeover of the Detroit carmaker back in 1998.

Schrempp's successor Dieter Zetsche is paying out another $680 million to cancel Chrysler's debts and convince Cerebrus, a private-equity firm, to assume a controlling stake. From now on Daimler AG -- as the company will now be called -- retains a 19.9 percent share of Chrysler's assets but will withdraw from day-to-day operations.

Leaving aside losses on the stock market, and noting the $11 billion that Zetsche claims Chrysler added to DaimlerChrysler's operating profit over those nine years, Daimler is about $25.7 billion poorer now than it was before the merger.

That's $25.7 billion for the lesson that corporate synergies aren't always positive -- that expensive Daimler technology is still expensive, even when installed on cheap US cars; that the takeover of a brand image is not a one way street; and that company cultures sometimes mix like oil and water.

Daimler Returns to its Roots

Now Daimler can return to its core competencies -- making high-value, technically advanced cars. Corporate headquarters in Stuttgart won't have to dispatch managers to answer probing questions about the company's struggling US mass market division. "For Daimler there is a great opportunity in this new beginning," automobile expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "They can prove once again that they can build cars."

Daimler's rival in Munich, BMW, has already shown how a terrible ending can become a success. When BMW split from the loss-making British carmaker Rover, it also had to write off billions of dollars, but afterwards the it forged ahead in leaps and bounds. Now BMW tops the list of luxury car manufacturers, ahead of Daimler's Mercedes core brand. It remains to be seen if Daimler can take back pole position in the industry. BMW has amassed valuable "know how," while Volkswagen subsidiary Audi has also started to play at the top level. And Daimler is faced with competition from Japanese carmaker Toyota, which has seen global success with its luxury Lexus subsidiary.

The aces are now distributed differently: Mercedes no longer dominates when the technical avant garde. It's only marginally ahead in safety features, another former selling point. In the meantime other brands have made strides in other areas: BMW and Volkswagen are at the forefront when it comes to energy-efficient engines, and Toyota is taking the lead in the hybrid cars market.

Volkswagen Piles on the Pressure

The Mercedes brand also has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to cutting production costs and improving quality control. BMW and Porsche have shown how it is possible to make savings through outsourcing -- but Mercedes still does most of its own manufacturing.

The pressure that Volkswagen has imposed on its rivals also may not ease up. Ferdinand Piëch, VW's patriarch, has turned the internal transfer of technology into a true cost-killer. Unlike Schrempp and Zetsche at DaimlerChrysler, Piëch used his time as chairman of the board to ruthlessly push a policy of using the same components throughout VW's product lines. Current CEO Martin Winterkorn has said he will follow the same strategy.

The same pattern goes for the heavy trucks sector, where Mercedes is still the undisputed top dog. But Volkswagen is working on an alliance among Scania, MAN and its own truck division. Chances are that Daimler will soon regret having spent all those billions on the Chrysler merger -- it may need those resources to face the competition.