Yes, absolutely true. They’ve been seeing this coming for years.
I’m talking about the recent furor where GM comes hat in hand to DC, saying they can’t make it to the end of the year - and earlier in 2008, there was no such dire pronouncement.
Sales of many types of domestic autos were falling off as gas went higher and higher, but then so were Japanese sales too.
The foreign car companies just have a more sound cost structure in both domestic and foreign plants.
There were some dire predictions, GM got reduced to junk bond status in 2007 if I recall correctly. Two things happened in recent months to change everything though, first was the government proving they would bailout poorly run companies against the wishes of the people and most sound economic advice, and the second was a serious free fall in the sale of anything that required credit (tied very closely to the first thing). These things hastened their decline but also showed there was good money to be made playing beggar in DC.