[muawiyah]

Let's say we're looking at a bottom end American built car priced at around $20,000. At 10% the labor costs would be $2000. At $72 per hour, that would give us about 35 hours or so to build a car.

Ain't bad.

Then, let's look at a comparable Korean import priced at around $15,000.

For folks hardpressed by the current credit market.......................

Yup, guy's right, folks can't afford to pay that extra $5,000 for "materials"?

[Farmer Dean]

Look at all the good used cars available for 8-12k.If the big 3 went under there wouldn’t be a shortage of cars for a couple of years at least.By then Toyota,Honda and others will have expanded production.

[factoryrat]

Material costs are relative to where it is sourced from. Most of the “transplants” source material from their home countries, and assemble cars here, with foreign parts . The big three does the same. The one thing that most people don’t realize is that virtually all automakers in the U.S. buy parts from the same suppliers.