"It's the rumour of the day, or the week," Chrysler Group spokesman Mike Aberlich said of the GM report. "It's just speculation and we're not going to comment on speculation."

"We've said on many occasions that conversations throughout the auto industry happen all the time," GM spokesman Tony Cervone said. "And those conversations very often lead to nothing."

"I think there's some fire with all that smoke," he said. "With the Chrysler Group losing money and looking for alternatives to save development costs, joint ventures, technology-sharing with GM and some of the other auto companies might make a lot of sense."