Originally Posted by
JDNSW
Actually, looking at the car industry as a whole, and over the life of the industry, it is almost unheard of for any manufacturer to consistently make money in real terms without, protection, subsidies or creative accounting (or all of the above).
Countries tend to bail out their own manufacturers, often treating them as "to big to allow to fail".
So predicting "Personally I can't see the smaller japanese companies surviving without being acquired, and I can't see the big ones making it without being nationalised." is a fairly safe prediction.