What I find most frustrating about the current situation is that the domestics demonstrate with some models that they are capable of building good cars that people want to buy for other than patriotic reasons, but have still foisted so much junk on the market.
My experience of the past 10 years or so is that after way too many suspension repairs, electrical gremlins, and tranny problems on two Sables and a Windstar, I decided to try a 2004 Accord. At 60K I love the Accord, but I still wish that Ford had refined the Taurus over the years into a car that I would prefer to an Accord. And I hope they keep working on the Fusion, and that Chevy keeps working on the Malibu. Both are good starts, albeit many years later than they should have come.
One issue that I don't think has been discussed enough is the care that goes into design. If you just list features of the Taurus/Sable (prior model, not the new rebadged 500) against the Accord, they would come out about the same, and if you list features of the new Malibu it looks better than the Accord or Camry. If you bring the Fusion into the picture it would be about the same on features. But look carefully at how they are put together.
I am sure there are some examples to the contrary, but when I work on my Accord, most of the time I come away impressed by the design, the simplicity and functionality. It just seems more well thought out than the domestic counterparts. The engine bay of my Accord looks neat and well organized, and is easy to work on (except changing the oil filter - Honda messed up on that one). I rented a Fusion a few months ago, and the engine bay looked a mess. Sure it ran fine, but it looked cobbled together, rather than thoughtfully designed.
The body work provides another example. My Accord got hit in the left front about a year ago and I had the body work done at a Chevy and Honda dealer. The body shop manager told me that it takes typically about 2-3 times as long to remove the front quarter panel on a Chevy than on a Honda. Does that mean the Honda panels are flimsy and about to fall off? No - it means that the Honda designers put more thought into how to attach the quarter panel.
I still remember vividly my first exposure to Japanese cars around 1970 when car shopping with my father. I was accustomed to domestic cars with cables and lines strapped to the bottom of the car every which way, and hanging down in awkward locations. I crawled under a Japanese car in the showroom (I think it was the Mitsubishi built Colt) and saw a neatly constructed cable/line tray recessed into the floor panel, and no hanging cables. I was astonished, but also started to wonder why it was so much more thoughtfully designed than the domestic (and European at the time) cars.
Since I really can't believe that the Japanese engineers were/are more talented than the US engineers, I suspect it was some component of management that just did not give the engineers the time/budget to take as much care. The domestic cars gave the impression that the instructions to the engineers were to just make it work, don't refine it to make it better.
This may be all way off base, but these are the impressions I have developed over the years.
With only 60K on my Accord, I don't expect to be buying another car for probably about 10 years. By then, or hopefully before then, I would love for the domestic mainstream sedans to be the leaders that Honda and Toyota are chasing, rather than the other way around. My concern with bankruptcy is that the current management will be able to stay in place and continue current practices - and that survival will be related to lower costs only, not to better products. I don't know if congress can structure anything better through a bailout, but at least there is the possibility of leverage to create management changes, not just lower costs.
