Chrysler was able to force some to close by holding over the dealer organizations' heads the threat that the government would not do the bailout and all Chrysler dealers would go away.
Unlike a market-based failure, the government-led restructuring was surely not done fairly and likely some reputable and honest owners were penalized for not being more politically connected.
If the American auto industry had totally collapsed, there wouldn't have been any cars to sell.
There was at least one offer to buy Chrysler (from Penske). I'd be surprised if there weren't any offers to buy GM.
Of course, those offers involved real bankruptcy. The resulting companies wouldn't have kept the UAW contracts and pension obligations and they wouldn't have been able to keep the tax-loss carry-forwards either.
They'd have kept dealers based (more) on economics instead of political pull.
And, the bond holders would have gotten their cut first.
GM makes sense at the right expense point.
Okay.
> buying a company the size of GM at the time of the bailout would still have been a very difficult proposition.
As you point out above, GM could have been sold in parts. (Some of the brands and models are independent of the rest.)
Basically it would have been a no-reserve auction with the money going to the bondholders. (They'd have taken a loss, but wouldn't have lost everything.) The winning bid is based on what folks are willing to pay, not what someone thinks GM is worth, book value, etc.
There's actually a lot of money available for such deals. Yes, 10s of billions and hundreds for "special" deals.
Maybe Japan, Korea, and Europe would have had most of the business for a while. Ford was already international and didn't take any of the bailout either.
Nah. Democrats and Republicans alike would have us all believe we'd be riding bikes and horses to work because, magically, no cars would exist for at least five years.
Total shit.
The PBGC has been under-funded for a long time (due to crony capitalism and corruption benefiting both parties and the firms, at the expense of workers' security) and the result was that the automakers had a lot of extra leverage in bailout negotiations b/c the alternative for the government was the dissolution of the PBGC and the public realization of the fraud that had been going on.
Among other things, the PBGC only guarantees pensions to the tune of $45k/year with no benefits (unlike the UAW pensions).