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The reason GM and Chrysler went bankrupt was simple, there were producing the wrong cars during a period of high oil prices.
Ford has been facing that same problem since the 1970s, the Fiesta was introduced over and over again, and then withdrawn do to lack of sales. Why the lack of Sales? The price of gasoline went down, so less people wanted them. Furthermore the Small Car market in the US is the most price sensitive sector of the Automotive market. If people want a small fuel efficient car, they will go for the cheapest one they can find. No loyalty as to brand or mark. Not only the big Three, but ALL of the Importers try to build up Brand Loyalty. The advantage of Brand loyalty is that if the Ford is $500 cheaper then a Chevy, people with loyalty to Chevy will still buy the Chevy, but people without brand loyalty would go with the Ford, even if their first choice was a Chevy.
With larger cars you can build up this Brand Loyalty. The Japanese (and later other importers) first entered the US Market in the Cheap car market. It was so bad that while the big three still made money of the few small cars they sold, their dealers hated them, for all had to be deeply discounted to even have a chance against the imports. To offset this (and to meet the requirement of the Corporate Fleet Average law), the big three and later the importers, started to attribute less and less Corporate overhead to such vehicles and more and more to the more profitable larger cars and Trucks, just to keep the price low so these cars would sell (Remember the Small car market is the most price sensitive).
Thus historically, the Big Three broke even on their small cars, and made most of their profits on the sale of large Cars. Starting in the 1980s you had the SUV craze, when many people who use to buy sports car and Full Size Cars, switched to SUVs. All of this the result of the reduction in the price of Gasoline between 1980 and 2000. Small cars were unpopular at that time period, everyone wanted an SUV, and that is where the profit was (Even the Japanese got into the act, after the Japanese were permitted to import full size trucks into the US in the 1990s).
Thus Ford, GM and Chrysler all but abandon the Small Car sector of the Automobile market. They stayed in it to keep up their Corporate Fuel Average, but that was about it. The big Three lobbied Congress to exclude SUVs from the Corporate Fuel Average, and succeeded to a degree (In the Case of the Hummer, to exclude it completely from the Corporate Fuel Average law). Starting in 2000, you started to see smaller SUVs instead of the large Suburbans and Explorers, but what you saved in fuel in that reduction, you more then gained in people switching from Cars to those Smaller (Through larger then the Cars being traded in) SUVs.
Then the 2008 Rapid increase in Gasoline prices and the Collapse of the Car industry in the US. The Big Three were all set up for producing large SUVs not Small cars, all would take three to four years to switch to small cars production, but few people wanted their large SUVs do to the high price of Gasoline. Ford even discussed bring in its KA, a City type Car Ford makes and sell in Europe, but by the time production of the KA could be adapted for US sale, the price of Gasoline had dropped and Ford determined the KA would NOT be a good sale in the US given the lower price of Gasoline. The Ka has a 1.2 liter engine.
GM is in worse shape then Ford when it comes to Small Cars, for the simple reason GM has since WWII been almost twice the size as Ford in the US, while Ford almost match GM worldwide given Ford much higher sales overseas. Thus GM has less cars it can switch to US production from European Production (In fact the Cruze was introduced into Europe over a year before it was released in the US, even through both versions were produced at the Lordstown Plant in Ohio).
Given the above recent background (I know of the attack on Streetcars and Buses by GM, but that was decades ago and of little relevance today) what the Big Three fears the most is the price of gasoline going up and down in three to four year cycles. By the time any of them had adapted to the price change, the price would have reversed forcing the big three to reverse their previous changes. There is only one way to solve this problem, keep the price of gasoline stable, but that means someone controls oil production so that if the price goes up, you increase production till the prices drops. If the price goes down to far, you cut production till the price goes back up. This was performed by the role Saudi Arabia has done since the 1970s, and from the 1930s till the late 1960s the Texas Railroad Commission (Which control the oil production in Texas and thus world wide oil prices from the 1930s till 1969).
With no one able to control production prices will become unstable. The only other solution is taxation, with taxation demand will drop and thus so will the price. If the price goes up to high, you can abolish the tax. It is the best solution we have to control the price of oil, and thus why the Big Three (And the Japanese importers) all support a Gasoline tax. If prices should drop the Big Three's plans to switch to small cars will NOT be undermined by the drop in oil prices. This is clearly the concern of the Big Three, nothing else. When someone controlled oil production, the Big Three opposed gasoline taxes, but today no one control oil production and price volatility will become the norm. The big Three wants to protect their investment in switching to small car production and the only way they can do so is to keep the price of gasoline high, thus the support for higher gasoline taxes in the US.
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