PAN - Although the economy is going to affect this in a lot of ways, I'm not sure that we can pin the problems of GM and Ford on Healthcare and minimum wage. The next article you posted with the Chairman of Toyota is very interesting - especially the part about artificially inflating his own prices to help GM sell more cars. I think that was more of a jab than sincere concern on his part...
American automakers have not diversified and have ignored the rest of world because pick-up truck sales in the U.S. were always a given, and gave a nice cushion of revenue to count on. They got lazy with the unions and myopic with product development. The jobs the we are losing around the country are the pick-up truck demographic, and sales have bottomed out. (Toyota sells very few and Honda never even bothered with pick ups)
Because the dollar is worthless than 70% of what it was 2 years ago, there is no way that they can compete in the world market with the car lines. They are stuck selling here, and there demographic has lost 500,000 jobs in the last 4 years. I smell another bail out coming and it stinks...