It was like flipping a coin.  It could have gone either way.  Chrysler survives to build another day.  Chrysler joins the ranks of the companies that used to be.

The Obama Administration had to make the call.  And it was a close one.

According to an account of the events surround the Chrysler bailout told by auto task force head Steven Rattner in the October 21, 2009, issue of Fortune magazine, the team thought there was only a 51% chance that Chrysler would be around five years from now.  Still, the President made an economic and political calculation that letting Chrysler die—taking 300,000 jobs and the possibility that Democrats would lose any chance of carrying the industrial Midwest in the future—would be too catastrophic for a nation on the brink of a depression.

“I’ve decided.  I’m prepared to support Chrysler if we can get the Fiat alliance done on terms that make sense to us,” Rattner recalls President Obama telling his team after careful deliberation at the White House.  “I want you to be tough, and I want you to be commercial.”

Now more than two months after Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy under the control of Fiat and the watchful eye of its new CEO Sergio Marchionne, the automaker is about to let the world in on its five-year plan for survival on November 4.  What will the plan include?  There’s been a few leaks, including reports that Fiat will bring the 500 to the U.S., as well as launch several of its powertrains in future Chrysler models.  The company has already announced plans to divide its Ram and Dodge brands and replace the Dodge Sprinter with Fiats Ducato commercial van.

But there have been some significant changes behind the scenes that have caught little attention from the press that are equally important.  First and foremost, Chrysler insiders tell me that the company has moved aggressively to add to its dwindling design staff—at one point the team was down to fewer than 20 people.  This is part of the company’s plan to return Chrysler to the design pedestal where it once sat.  Likewise, the company is boosting its engineering ranks.  “In the past two months I have seen more action in this company than I have seen in the past two years,” a Chrysler employee recently told me.

These are good signs that things are moving in the right direction, but Marchionne and his team must continue to move at lightning speed if they are to get Chrysler on the path to prosperity in the near-term.  Some reports indicate it may take upwards of 18 months for Fiat to begin integrating its product plans with Chrysler’s, but that’s too long.  Yes, there’s a new line of heavy-duty Ram’s arriving in the next few months, along with a new Jeep Grand Cherokee, but both of those products are entering market segments that are reeling from the recession—the heavy-duties in particular need a robust housing market as the foundation for their success since more than 50% of the market is vocational users, and as unemployment is expected to hover around 10% next year, there probably won’t be a whole lot of housing starts, which means that Chrysler probably can’t count on too many sales for these Rams.

Marchionne and his team have to harness the hunger to succeed that still exists inside Chrysler and put the pedal to the floor on product development, even if it means growing the ranks even more to get things done quickly.  Revisions to the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger have to be placed on an accelerated path, with anything short of the next 12-months being unacceptable.  The company must also rationalize its product offerings—for example, when it has the authentic Jeep Liberty compact SUV, why does it have the Dodge Nitro?  Kill it.  In fact, they should kill off all of the Dodge SUVs, leaving the brand to focus exclusively on performance cars, now that the trucks have their own channel.

Rumors have also been circulating that plans are in place to move Chrysler into a luxury positioning.  Wasn’t this tried before, resulting in complete failure?  Chrysler should be more of a mainstream brand, with a focus on being green.  Sure, the vehicles can have some luxury appointments, but that doesn’t need to be the prevailing credo.  In fact, Chrysler needs to better define what its brands are to a consumer base that’s saturated with brand messages.  What does each brand stand for?  Why are they needed?  The customer needs to know why they should be buying Chrysler vehicles.  When people drive around and see vacant dealerships with shadows of the pentastar left on the walls, they’ve got to be wondering why they’d ever buy a Chrysler.

It seems that everyone inside Chrysler knows that time is not on their side.  November 4 is an important date, but it’s just the start of the hard-and-fast road ahead that leaves little room for error in a market where potholes are popping up daily.  It’s going to be a wild ride, and like iffy existence just before the bailout, there is a good chance that it could go either way.