No, it couldn't be the poor build quality, the lump of shit in a shoe box design, or building 20 variations of the same fucking car that hurt the Big Three, it has to be requiring them to build cars with good fuel economy, something every fucking other automaker on the planet has figured out.

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What other automakers don't do is build fuel efficient cars with an aging infrastructure they refuse to replace. Everybody loves to pile on the unions, but they're the tip of the iceberg that is the gross inefficiencies that plague the Big Three.

Any problems the Big Three have meeting federal guidelines are a symptom of the much bigger problems they face, not the problem itself.

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BUT, I completely disagree with the notion of trying to sell cars very few people want, especially if you're claiming that people don't want trucks and SUVs. The Ford F150 is and has been the number one selling vehicle in the US for 20+ years solid. The Ford Explorer, Chevy Blazer, Chevy Silverado, the Suburban platform, etc. I could go on for forever on vehicles that sold like hotcakes for an extremely long time. So you can't say that they were vehicles the public didn't want.

Toyota didn't have a crystal ball on the current situation. They sank twice the normal budget of a new vehicle into their latest Tundra- which gets the worst gas mileage out of all the full size pickups- and it has failed miserably.

The main reason why the Japanese do better at building/selling small cars is because they've been doing it for forever in their home market. They don't make much more profit off them than the US companies- and if they do, it's because there's little pressure for them to build them in a specific market (like in the homeland) and then cover the healthcare costs of the workers employed to do so.

GM and Ford have the same deal in the Middle East, South America, and soon Africa- people love SUVs there because they actually use them. But they could care less where they're built. Unfortunately, they don't have as much disposable income, so they constitute an extremely small market at the time.

But you're right- there was no one thing that has brought the companies down. But it's also an invalid argument to say that if there were no CAFE standards, it wouldn't change anything, because there's no way for any of us to know exactly what hurts them the most.

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And even that overlooks the fact that the health care and pension benefits that are now killing the companies (GM in particular) were granted thirty years ago in exchange for reduced wage demands. The car companies got the benefits of those deals during the '60s and '70s, apparently not thinking anyone would ever get old and retire, then found themselves on the hook for the most expensive years of their ex-employees lives. On top of that, having already given away solid pensions and continued benefits past retirement, the companies had nothing to offer other than wages once the '80s and '90s rolled around. Fast forward to the '00s and they're taking it at both ends – high wages and ridiculous benefits.

Ford's in a better position than the other two because they have cash on hand. That's largely as a result of their successful efforts to sell divisions like Jaguar before the bottom fell out. Part of that might have just been timing, but the company did manage to turn some real crap into valuable assets. They've also been producing some solid vehicles overseas (as HSS mentioned) which are now starting to bear fruit in North America – even the hybrid Fusion is competitive with the rest of the field, despite being overlooked by every greentard out there.

Any problems the Big Three have meeting federal guidelines are a symptom of the much bigger problems they face, not the problem itself.

Indeed.

Now why haven't any of the Wall St. bigwigs had to walk?

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But you're right, we can't really prove what would have happened if there were no CAFE standards; but can we at least stop with the socialism bullshit? The government didn't do this to the Big Three, they did it to themselves. We aren't within 50 miles of British Leyland-ism; and giving them the excuse of blaming CAFE standards lets them off the hook for everything else.

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"Now why haven't any of the Wall St. bigwigs had to walk?"

They actually have, but unfortunately, they weren't really the ones who did the damage- they just fiddled while Rome burned, then accepted the keys to a new, gated city and sit back happily now. It was more the guys under them, the managers of specific branches of the companies who were at fault.

Oh, and they have the kind of connections with the government that the auto companies used to have in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, because they've bankrolled campaigns, held top positions, groomed those who now hold top positions, and have become a sort of shadow government.

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I wouldn't go so far to say that it's socialism- but I'll put it this way, the government didn't really help either.

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you live in Cedar Village?

RUN, YOU STUPID FUCKING COMMENTER, RUN!

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Are you kidding? He's waiting by the window in Vegas to collect.

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