"Project Phoenix" says that while the car manufacturing plants in Germany (above) would be safeguarded, Fiat would close or scale back several engine and component making factories in the country, as well as closing down vehicle manufacturing factories in Spain, UK, Sweden, Belgium and Austria.

A second secret action plan by Fiat for a merger of its automotive division with GM Europe's Opel/Vauxhall unit has fallen into the hands of the German media and this time it is being claimed that it is the document presented to the German government by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne during a meeting on Monday. The plan, dubbed "Project Phoenix", has been outlined this morning in the Wall Street Journal and German economic daily newspaper Handelsbatt.

Earlier this week another action plan called "Project Football" was leaked, causing widespread concern around Europe as it foresees a swage of factory closures being made, with the bulk of them set to come from outside Germany.

Today's "Project Phoenix" however is claimed to be the plan presented by Fiat to the German government that outlines its merger proposals for GM's European division and a merger with Opel. Like "Project Football" it envisages the closure of several factories in Europe, including two unnamed in Italy. The news was made public by Handelsblatt this morning, the newspaper quoting from "Project Phoenix" which it says is in its possession, and the Wall Street Journal.

The document is said to be 46 pages long and it also includes the proposal touted in recent days to buy out the GM plants in Latin America, as well as mentioning for the first time Fiat's interest in GM's South African operations (which are part of the same GM business division). The document does not mention the names of the two factories in Italy that Fiat would close if the Opel merger goes ahead, but it says that one is in the south and the other in the north of the country. Handelsblatt however hints that one of these will be the threatened Pomigliano d'Arco plant near Naples, that builds the Alfa 147, 159, 159 Sportwagon and GT Coupé. Sicily's Termini Imerese factory, which is the current home to the Lancia Ypsilon supermini, as well as Pininfarina's Giorgio Canavese plant near Turin, which currently builds the Alfa Brera and Spider sports cars will "assign another production mission within Fiat Group."

The new entity will be seeking around US$7 billion in state aid from European governments over the next two years according to the document with says that "this assumes that Fiat and GM will not contribute any cash or financial debt to the combined entity." With Marchionne actively looking to gain access to the GM platforms that underpin the C-segment Opel Astra and D-segment Opel Insignia, the plan requires that the "intellectual property currently in use by GM Europe be licensed by GM on a royalty-free timeline basis."

This is a slightly different plan to the one that national German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted from in its Wednesday edition. That report the newspaper claimed was a 103-page internal Fiat document called "Project Football" which revealed that a merged Fiat-Opel entity will preserve the bulk of the 108,000 merged entity's jobs in Germany with the brunt of the cuts coming in Italy, Belgium and the UK. It named Termini Imerese and Pomigliano d'Arco as slated to close. Fiat denied the existence of that report although the German government was less forthright.

Today's "Project Phoenix" document quoted by Handelsblatt and the Wall Street Journal follows a broadly similar theme and says that while the car manufacturing plants in Germany would be safeguarded, Fiat would close or scale back several engine and component making factories in the country, as well as closing down vehicle manufacturing factories in Spain, UK, Sweden, Belgium and Austria. It also says the cost savings of a merged Opel-Fiat entity have been identified at 1.4 billion euros; earlier this week Marchionne quoted a lower figure, saying that cost savings would be in the order of 1 billion euros.