But we got better, and GM (not where I worked) probably the most of any American car Co. Sure GM made some pretty sorry shit in the 70's, but that was a long time ago. As parrotlover suggested the meme is just that.

GM, et al could have gone on surviving and maybe even improved a little, but the economic collapse that started in 2000 (don't be fooled by the ensuing jobless recovery) took down the industry. In very large measure, the financial debacle on recent years is a player.

It's also true that auto industry management has sucked over the entire period. And the higher you get in the structure, the worse they are. Lousy management, wrong product mix, bad economy —> shitty result..

Whereas every car manufacturer has ten models of SUV, there are only a handful of low cost (and high quality) compact and subcompact family vehicles. It's a no-brainer. If you go into a market, even a very active one like the SUV market for 15 years up until The Great Gas Price Gouge, where there are so many options, you will lose. If you go into a less dominant, but still very active, market with only a handful of competitors, you stand a much better chance.

Now, I don't mean to oversimplify the whole issue to just "if they just would have built car X and then PROFIT" but I do think it shows at least a small part of bigger problem of BAD business decisions that were not related to quality as much as desirability.

Now that most of Wall Street and Detroit lies in ruins, it would be a good time for the progressives in this country to start questioning the desirability of laissez-faire capitalism a l'americaine. But they seem to be a bit slow on the uptake (maybe, like sufferers from Stockholm Syndrome, they've internalized Reagan's nonsense about gov't being the problem). I see the right is not wasting any time in revising history and framing the argument for the next debate: Wall Street didn't collapse, it was all Fannie Mae and Freddie's fault, whom Clinton had forced to give mortgages to darkies; and Detroit wouda been doin' jes' fine, had it not been for those greedy, inflexible UAW workers who wanted to keep their princely benefits and pensions indefinitely. Even high-minded outfits like The Economist occasionally succumbs to this myth.