[GEaston]

American car companies took over where British Leyland left off. US car industry is though rather unique. In the pre-war period there were three principal manufacturers of cars: USA, Japan and Germany. Two of those were carpet bombed or nuked taking competition out of he market altogether. Free of competition and stoked by demand at home ridiculous creations with large fins came out of Detroit and that city became the 4th largest in the USA.

USA didn't need to create good cars to sell them, and that legacy is kept alive by govt today. Daimler Benz thought they could take on the problem, solve the issues in production and sort out quality and it nearly bankrupted them. Expensive and rare mistake for the Germans.

USA govt bailed the American car industry because the political price of not doing so was too great. Remember they do all have guns and as was demonstrated by Katrina it took only 24 hrs for the complete degeneration of society in a crisis. Detroit was already a car crash so closing this terrible industry was not a realistic option for Bush although he must have hated having to bail them out (went against everything he stood for).

Point made about Triumph bikes was an interesting one but its not the same company. Triumph went to the wall for making a bad product that no one bought. The name was then bought about 20 years later and newco started producing bikes unrelated to the old (but was able to ride on nostalgia, that many people have for the past with new and unrelated product).