New Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne celebrates a landmark day in Chrysler’s history and addresses employees for the first time at the company’s headquarters Wednesday in Auburn Hills, Mich. Chrysler and Fiat Group finalized their previously announced global strategic alliance, forming a new Chrysler.

Detroit ? Chrysler was reborn Wednesday under a new Italian parent, but it can’t shake the shadows of its past: It’s not selling enough cars, its fleet is tilted to trucks and SUVs, and help is more than a year away.

A 42-day stay in bankruptcy court cleansed the company of much of its debt and labor costs, but many analysts say Chrysler’s immediate future is bleak. It lost $8 billion in 2008, and sales are down by almost half for the first five months of this year.

Cars designed by its new owner, Italy’s Fiat Group SpA, won’t make it to the U.S. until late 2010. In the meantime, Chrysler is left with few new vehicles headed to its drastically reduced network of dealers. Its aging model lineup is still heavy with bigger vehicles. And its offerings in the growing small and midsize markets haven’t caught on.

“The showroom is not going to look terribly different over the next 18 months,” said Aaron Bragman, an analyst for the consulting firm IHS Global Insight.

Even if the new Chrysler Group LLC can survive, the super-small Fiat cars that were popular in Europe could be out of step with Americans who like bigger cars and are used to lower gas prices.

During Fiat’s last run at the U.S. market, in the 1970s and ’80s, reliability problems led people to suggest the name stood for “fix it again, Tony.”

“Fiat is really not a known commodity in the U.S. market,” said David Koehler, a clinical marketing professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The new Chrysler began operations Wednesday morning after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of lower court decisions that allowed the transfer of most of the old Chrysler’s assets to Fiat.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne was named chief executive of the new company, and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli said farewell to employees and ended his tumultuous 20-month reign.

Jim Press, who was Toyota Motor Corp.’s top U.S. executive until he joined Chrysler in 2007, was named deputy CEO and will probably run the company when Marchionne is in Italy.

In an e-mail to Chrysler’s 54,000 workers, Marchionne acknowledged the company’s problems and said he was determined to repair them.

“We have remade Fiat into a profitable company that produces some of the most popular, reliable and environmentally friendly cars in the world,” he wrote. “We can and will accomplish the same results here.”

Marchionne’s immediate problem is weak offerings in small and midsize cars.

Work is already under way to convert Chrysler factories to produce small Italian-designed cars. But Toyota and Honda remain the champs of midsize cars, and Fiat still has to prove itself to American drivers.

The good news for Chrysler is that it has cut its expenses enough that it can break even with lower sales, said Gary Dilts, senior vice president of global automotive operations for J.D. Power and Associates.