Chrysler LLC should leave bankruptcy in a month or two with a slimmed-down balance sheet, new management, a global partner, fewer dealers, lower labor costs and maybe even a new name.

If a quick bankruptcy is successful, it will accomplish many of the things executives for the automaker have been trying to do for decades. None of it guarantees success because the new Chrysler still has to sell cars, as well as pickups, Jeeps and minivans. Its US sales are down 46 percent this year.

The automaker and the US government plan to use a surgical bankruptcy to sell Chrysler's best assets, such as its Dodge Ram pickup, to a new company with streamlined costs and debt, which would team up with Fiat SpA. The alliance would create the world's sixth-largest car manufacturer and in turn the new company would also bring some of Fiat's small cars to the US.