Sounds like most (2/3) of the money lost was in the book value of lease vehicles. They won’t get as much for second hand SUVs as they had anticipated.
I owned a new ‘86 Astro and it was good, reliable vehicle, nothing junk about it at all. I also owned a new ‘97 Ford Ranger, same thing.
Where Detroit is losing me as a customer has been in smaller commuter vehicles. They don’t have anything in their stable to compare to Corolla, Civic, Camry, Subaru, etc. imho.,
Toyotas and later, Datsuns, began showing up in the 1970's, right? And the Big Three were bloodied then. They have had a GENERATION in which to figure it out. They responded with things like Gremlins, Pintos, Geos,etc., and later with Tauruses and Saturns, which were really not all that bad..But they just never seemed to get it.
The truck and SUV markets were accepted by the customers, so this led to a decade of denial and fantasy.
Everone knew that OPEC hated our guts, but never seemed to make the connection that the party was not going to last.
BTW, going shopping this morning, I see two more SUV's on front yards..added to the three previously placed trucks and an SUV which are still sitting there unsold.
I am seriously thinking of getting one, when they hit a nickel a pound, because now that I am retired I do not drive that much, so gas prices are not that important any more. When I was commuting 100 miles a day, it would have made it untenable. My neighbor has a commute like mine, actually to the very same town. He sold his big pickup a few weeks ago. Had to.
I think people will adapt. Where I live everyone has at least two vehicles. They are saving the trips in the big vehicles for situations where they have to use them, and are putting the mileage on the smaller one for the nuisance trips. People are taking one trip for several stops now.. And it does appear to be working. Oil prices are down again, and the financial pages are blaming lowering demand. It looks like they have finally found the elastic limit of demand.
Too late for the auto companies, though. They had their warnings long ago.
I agree with your comment about smaller vehicles, and those are exactly the kind of cars people want. A few months ago I looked at Ford’s cars, and found the choices very limited. Next car will probably be a Honda.