jd, I really doubt the foreign transplants will go union anytime soon. When they get 10-20 times as many people applying for jobs as the number of positions open, it really kills the possibility of unions penetrating.
The high productivity of the transplants and well managed production has meant layoffs have been few. Furthermore, the flexible manufacturing has enabled them to better cope with the ebb and flow of demand.
What few people realize is much of a disadvantage the domestics have is based upon pure stupidity. For example, a Toyota Camry sold here is virtually the same car that's sold in Europe, Asia, and at home in Japan. Right hand drive is the only big change that car undergoes. However, GM has different vehicles to sell in the US, Europe, and Australia. I don't know the exact number, but I'd bet GM has 4-5 times more platforms than Toyota while selling the same volume in light vehicles.
Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and even the Germans figured out a long time ago that management of the auto company starts at the platform level. It's such a basic concept, but the US-centric domestics never got it, and they're now getting buried.
The US strategy for the past 35-years has been sell large vehicles at big margins during good times to make up for lean times when they would not be profitable. The Japanese strategy has been to attempt to maintain profitablity under the most adverse conditions and profit more when conditions are more favorable.
The Japanese make a decision based upon what's going to happen 10-years down the road. The domestics often make a decision based upon what's going to happen 4-quarters down the road.
The way the domestic companies go about doing business must be radically altered. Without a pre-packaged Chapter 11 reorganization, I doubt they will ever look to do it. The way they are doing business is a non-starter. They need to radically alter their approach.
No Car Czar will get what's going to be needed either.
GM had dopes like John Smale from P&G on the board earlier this decade. His contribution to the meetings was stuff like "I hope you're going to continue to advertise the Catera brand" like it was a diaper brand or something.
A lot of the institutionalized issues at GM date back to the 60's when they had autonomous divisions that ran like mini auto companies. They had their own engines, platforms, design teams, and it was very hard to change that in a system with so many entrenched people who would so like to see reform fail.
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