Chapter Five: G.M. Defined 'Too Big To Fail.' Then, it did.
The U.S. government finally did what G.M. resisted doing
“If things get no worse between now and 2010, and the companies simply lose ground to imports at the same rate they have been doing for the past few years, the Big Three will see their share of the American market slip to roughly 50 percent. Moreover, unless an phenomenal renaissance takes place, it is likely that at least one of them will not continue in the same form it is now. Neither size, in the case of G.M., nor the presence of the Ford family at Ford, nor the protection of DaimlerChrysler for Chrysler, can shield them from further deterioration.”
— The End of Detroit, 2003
When I wrote that 20 years ago, I knew it was a bold prediction. For generations, it seemed impossible that General Motors would actually end up in bankruptcy court. “The case would last my lifetime, my son’s lifetime, my grandson’s lifetime and maybe my great-grandson’s lifetime,” Stephen P. Yokich, the late president of the U.A.W., told me in a 1995 interview.