[oldE]

Tabs,
I agree with you 100% on this one. It was "Don't worry, be happy" for too long. While Japan was introducing us to efficient cars that ran for years, Detroit was pushing 'personal luxury' cars.
2.7 racer covered most of the main points. The biggest selling tool in the North American auto makers' tool box now is nostalgia: Mustang, Charger, PT Cruiser, SSR, T-bird.
Even Bob Lutz pushing the Solstice into production has come up with a Miata clone that has no trunk when the top is down.
Where is the leadership? Has the CMA generation of auto executives emasculated the NA auto industry? Chrysler has the cojones to push the envelope, stylistically, though they too have burrowed into their past to try to recapture a lost audience.
I agree it is good to see cars like the Caddy CTS (an Opel chassis), the GTO, (ditto, with a detour Down Under), the Ford Focus (Whoops, we don't get the new Europe only version) and the Fusion, (Oh yeah, that's a streatched Mazda 6), but it would be so good to see 'Detroit' come out with something better than a truck with four doors.
What we have been watching is the equivalent of the fall of the Roman Empire. And not just in the automotive sense.
Les