As the North American International Auto Show gets underway this week in Detroit, the Big Two and a Half automakers have reason to be ebullient.
With 12.8 million vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2011, it was the industry’s highest-volume sales year since 2008. Detroit automakers each finished in the black for the full year — the first time that has happened since 2004. Meanwhile, each gained market share for the first time since forever.
The celebrating would never would have happened if Mitt Romney, who opposed government intervention to save the automakers, had been president, and indeed the U.S. government, which oversaw the reorganization of G.M. and Chrysler in 2009, still owns 26 percent — 500 million shares — of G.M. stock.
Though Chrysler repaid its federal loans last year, the Fiat Group of Italy now controls the company. Fiat, struggling in Europe, is actually being kept afloat by Chrysler’s profits, while Ford, the only one of the Detroit automakers to refuse a federal bailout, is seeing its profitable North American earnings dragged down by losses in Europe.
Among the new models being introduced in Detroit is the 2013 Dodge Dart, an ugly rust bucket in his previous incarnation in the 1960s and 70s and a car that, as a friend remarked, you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in as a kid when being driven to school by your mother.
The new Dart will be a compact sedan based on a stretched and widened version of the platform used in the Alfa Romeo Giulietta. It will replace the Caliber as Dodge’s entry-level vehicle.