The American auto industry is on the verge of collapse. Things were bad when our current gas crisis started but now after months of $4 gas, the product baskets full of enormous SUVs and trucks are sinking the formerly "Big Three" like a giant anchor.
Chances are that Chrysler is not going to survive as a company for much longer. Think about that for a minute....what's going to happen if every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealership fold up shop? General Motors is hovering near a stock meltdown and Ford can't unload all of its unprofitable parts fast enough. The clock is ticking....
For a long time industry experts have cried that the Detroit automakers needed to dump some of their unprofitable brands and streamline their operations. Check out this chart of brands that SHOULD be killed off in order to bring some kind of sanity to their product lineups. The American car companies never did figure out that they were just spinning their wheels and wasting money trying to market and sell the same car under two or three different brand names. For example GM is stealing sales away from the Saturn Aura by selling the same car as the Chevrolet Malibu all the while wasting millions trying to market each as having unique brand character. What bullshit, they are the same damn car! The only one on that list that is sad is Saab. I never particularly liked Saab but they did make unique cars with a very distinct character...until GM bought them and homogenized the uniqueness out of their lineup. Why buy a Saab when it's really just a GM Vectra/Malibu/Aura in a fancy Swedish hat?
I grew up in a factory town, worse yet a Chrysler factory town. It scares the hell out of me to think what a ghost town it will become if Chrysler really does go down the tubes.
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