American car makers need to protect themselves more than anything. The fact is that if their vehicles were better built & more reliable than foreign vehicles, there wouldn't be a problem. Their complacency and arrogance has led to the current situation, and whilst most manufacturers are feeling the slowdown, only the big 3 are on the verge of collapse. British car makers went the way of the dodo because they didn't invest, didn't tighten up quality control, and allowed an ever shoddier product to leave the factory, whilst the Japanese learned, invested, and built increasingly better cars-not increasingly worse ones. I fear US manufacturers will make the same mistakes as British ones did