Big Cars, Big Auto

Megan defends Detroit's higher-ups on one count:

Management has made a lot of mistakes.  But making big cars wasn't one of them.  That's because they couldn't profitably make small cars in the United States.  And the reason they couldn't is that their labor costs were too high.  All in, Detroit was paying about $30 more an hour than other companies to make cars.  At that kind of differential, you have to concentrate on large cars with big profit margins, not economy cars where consumers fight to save $15 on the headlight bezels.