In November Nissan's sales were down the most (44%) and Ford's the least (30%).

My Dodge Durango has 140K miles on it and runs like a top.

Since 1992, states where we have transplants have located have put in over $3 billion dollars in incentives and I would point out that is the money that the state settled for and I want to go specifically to Alabama if I could for a minute. We have Hyundai Motor Company that got $252 million in incentives. Toyota there got $29 million in incentives. Honda, $158 million and Mercedes $253 million in incentives. It just seems odd to us that we can help the financial institutions in this country and that we can offer incentives to our competitors to come here and compete against us but at the same time, we are willing to walk away from an industry that is the backbone of our economy.

And while I read these figures to you, which are the actual figures that we have been able to dig up. I want to go to one particular story and that is the plant in Mercedes, the Mercedes plant in Alabama.

As it turned out, as I said Alabama offered $253 million but the state offered to train the workers, clear and improve the sites, upgrade the utilities, buy 2,500 vehicles and it is estimated that that incentive package totaled somewhere around $175,000/per employee to create those jobs there. And on top of this, that state gave this automaker a large parcel of land-around $250-$300 million dollars. That was the same price or cost to them of building a facility.

So we can support our competition but we can't support an industry that is in need? And this need was not brought about because of what the industry has done.

The entire article is here:

It's not in the interest of National Security to lose the infrastructure that allows us to have the capacity to ramp-up production of military vehicles (and who knows what else) in a time of need.  

I am not giving up on domestic cars, except for maybe Chrysler, but otherwise there is some hope.  But with that being said, I don't see a lot of quality coming from the American car companies.  My last three cars, all used, were Honda, SAAB, and Mazda.  All were excellent and better than what I viewed to be crappy domestic offerings.

There is no question that the domestic companies have done well in the SUV market, and probably produced the best monster trucks and NASCARs, but when it comes to small, normal, regular passernger cars, what have they done?  Toyota and Honda have done well but are also seeing lower sales, but are not on the brink of bankruptcy.