"Maybe if the 3 large companies followed suit of the other manufactures and stopped being so stubborn and had gotten into the small car markets earlier instead of insisting on building big gas guzzling trucks then they may not have been this far up the creek."
Obviously spoken by someone who has spent little or no time in the US!
Small cars have never enjoyed widespread popularity here in the states outside of some sales surges during gas price spikes. Priuses were back ordered last summer and dealers were charging surcharges. Now that gas prices have fallen back, they are gathering dust on the lots and the few that want one can buy one at a nice discount. In fact, cars and trucks from all the makers are gathering dust on the lots, but if you check the sales stats, you'll find that small and hybrid sales have fallen off at a higher rate than larger cars and SUVs this year.
Americans love big cars! I am not trying to defend or criticize that, just stating a fact. Despite the preaching of politicians and some in the media against that, it is true that Americans tend to think "bigger is better". Check the top 10 sales figure lists in the US over the years and there are always 2 or 3 pickup trucks. And for many of the others, what do you define as small? The Toyota Camry??? I was on a business trip last year and our rental was a Camry. I couldn't believe it when my colleague pulled up in our Camry at the airport, I didn't recognize it as I hopped in, it was huge!! Bigger by far than my Lincoln LS. I'd estimate the 2008 Camry is close to 50% larger than a 1990 Camry Foreign automakers have greatly increased the size of their most popular cars like Camrys and Accords to satisfy the American tastes for large cars. They are the size and weight of what smaller "large" cars and larger "intermediate" cars were 20 years ago.
Why are the U.S. auto makers in so much trouble today? The largest factor is the unprecedented drop in sales that started last summer. Car sales dropped 40-50% and that has caused much stress for almost all automakers, U.S. and foreign. Few businesses have reserves deep enough to weather such an extreme contraction of their business, without big problems. And because of the financial crisis, money in the form of credit lines could not be obtained to try to sustain their overhead until better times. The only reason Ford has been in better shape than the other two, is that they had negotiated a huge line of credit before this crisis hit, they had to sell their soul to get it, but now in retrospect they are looking pretty smart for what they did. We'll have to see if they too experience severe problems later on, but for now they are doing OK it seems.
Even companies like Toyota have have been badly hurt, the problems certainly aren't limited to the US automakers.
I'm not saying Chrysler or GM are blameless for their current ills, they certainly allowed themselves to be burdened by excessive union demands, an inefficient and overly large dealership network, too many brands and "badge engineering", etc., but the main thing that is killing them is this economic crisis that is affecting the entire world economy now caused by the result of too much greed, too many bankers, too much leverage and too many people and governments living beyond their means borrowing money.
I sure hope both GM and Chrysler can reorganize and stay in business. And I hope they can continue to offer a full lineup of everything from compact cars up to trucks and some performance cars like Corvettes and Challengers!
I doubt that will happen though, with governments heavy hand involved in the running of the reorganized companies, they will probably not be allowed to sell much beyond small and hybrid vehicles that will never sell in high volumes. That being the case, their long term prospects are bleak at best.
Take good care of those new Challengers, they may very well be just a two year run and those made during that time will be in demand by enthusiasts for many decades!
