Originally Posted by PC Dave

You've hit the real issue, aside from consumer apathy/distaste caused by a couple of decades of mediocre product. The cars are much better now, but most consumers aren't willing to give the domestics the benefit of the doubt.

Wall Street analysts have pointed out for years that GM, in particular, is run for the benefit of its retirees, not for the shareholders - that's where the majority of free cashflow goes. That's the laugh on the anti-capitalist lefties, the UAW has shrewdly gotten millions of shareholders to finance dozens of expensive factories so that the big 3 can pay their retirees much more than their earnings (i.e. what the shareholders get out of the deal). The Japanese and Germans have gov't health care and retirement, unlike the US (SocSec doesnt' really count, at least not to the UAW). The Japanese have to offer similar benefits to workers in their US plants, but those plants were all opened (with young workers) in the last 10-15 years. The big three are supporting generations of retirees' pensions and health care costs that the domestic Japanese/German factories won't have to deal with for decades, and their home plants in Japan/Germany don't deal with at all.

I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I recently read that the big 3 have a $1000-2000 cost per car to cover retirees pensions and health care that their competitors don't face. Even if they could sell the same cars for the same price, the domestics would be getting whacked by health care and retirement costs. That's why the big three all heavily supported Hilary Clinton's nationalized health care plan - they'd love to shift the retiree health care burden on to the taxpayers, in the same way that most of the steel industry went bankrupt and re-emerged much more competitive, having shifted its retiree costs to the taxpayers via the PBGC. If GM really does go bankrupt, that'll be the reason - it will get the shareholders in the post-bankruptcy Newco off the hook for health care and pensions for hundreds of thousands of UAW retirees, and allow the new GM to compete on a more level playing field.