At the turn of the century the ‘Big 3’ were riding high: huge sales and even grosser profits drove Chrysler, Ford, and GM to think they could do no wrong—or that whatever sins they did commit would be washed away in a flood of black ink.

Americans were in love with SUVs and trucks, and drunk on the cheap gasoline that propelled them. No one steering these corporate behemoths seemed to see the rocks ahead.

Now referred to as the Detroit 3, they’ve watched their market share erode to only 44% of a much smaller market; foreign firms gobbled up an astonishing 21% over those years. Automotive News says the domestics sold 6.8 million fewer vehicles in 2009 than they did in 2000. The pain (and ineptitude) look even more obvious when you realize that the drop in the overall new car market between those two years was about 7 million vehicles, meaning that, basically, import brands stayed flat in a market down 40% while Detroit crashed and burned.

I’ve seen this reflected in the brokering I do; there was a time when the inventory we stocked, or trades we kept, were split about 50/50 domestic to import. Now, it’s 75% import, as we find almost anyone will buy a ‘foreign’ car (as many of those are actually built here, I use the term in its classic sense); but only some folk will consider a Detroit product anymore.

Quite a reversal from when I started helping people get cars in 1991. Now, when I hear the Detroit 3’s leaders bang on about how they now are focused on profit, not volume, I chuckle. As if they even had a choice…

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