GM and Chrysler were DOOMED.
That's why they had to fork over more than $30 per hour in direct pay to their workers ~ everybody in the UAW knew the companies couldn't come up with the moxie to pay retirement and retired health benefits.
If the companies and unions had been honest and bargained in good faith, and set aside the funds necessary to back up the fringe benefit packages, they'd still be in business ~ and making less than $30 per hour.
BTW, many of the foreign auto and auto parts manufacturers in the United States are already into the same trick bag and regularly pay more than $30 per hour in direct compensation.
With the devolvement of GM and Chrysler to the level of major bicycle makers they will no longer provide a great attractor for "labor", and that should result in a decline in pay and benefits throughout the auto industry worldwide.
Make it 4...bad management!
Well the coup de grace was the present plunging economy. New car sales of all sorts are down. Used and new cars are a glut on the market. I discovered a dirty little secret in the car market recently — folks are backing out of car purchases at a high rate. This is flummoxing businesses like the used car king Carmax, whose bureaucratic nature gets them sitting on hot, easily saleable cars for days while some marginal buyer fumbles and bumbles around trying to get credit, to look at a car from some distant city, or to decide whether to keep the car at all. But again the car you think was gone may be back in a few days.
Almost correct, Gm long ago thought they could replace consumer demands with "slick marketing" of bad products. They have really turned out a lot of under-engineered trash over the years. Just last week I passed a rear wheel drive GM car with it's rear axle hanging out. Sheared c-clip