Car crash

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the Big Three of America8217;s Motor City of Detroit, were denied a bailout by the US Senate on Thursday, and thus might be collapsing. Of course, they have been collapsing for a long time. Over the past year, there hasn8217;t been a person who follows the American economy who hasn8217;t been aware that the automakers were in trouble; but they first set wheel on the downward slope well before that 8212; perhaps when they tried fancy financial tricks to pull themselves out of competitive holes, or when they decided patriotism was more effective marketing than quality, or when they blocked American health-care reform, or when they first decided to keep building outdated gas-guzzlers and watched suburbanites throughout America switch to Hondas.

Were they any other companies, they would have fallen by now. Great firms have fallen before. Pan American and TWA once ruled the skies, Montgomery Ward and Woolworth8217;s the malls. Those names have vanished, wiped from airline bags and the New York skyline. Were they from any other country, they would never fall. France and other European countries don8217;t let national industrial jewels disappear. The Big Three are the ultimate icons of American business and mobility 8212; Ford is the universal example cited for the efficiency of the production line, Chrysler has survived so many troubles that a past chairman, Lee Iacocca, became the face of aggressive, deal-making capitalism for a generation; and, as for GM, so closely interwoven was it with the American ship of state that in a previous confrontation in 1953, its chairman, Charlie Wilson, was widely believed to have told the Senate that 8220;what8217;s good for General Motors is good for the country.8221;

The outgoing and incoming administrations, together with the Democrats in the House and the Senate, might still manage to save these icons from the automobile graveyards; but the days of their indispensability are numbered.