The engineering is sound, but the problem is when you try to build a car with higher built-in costs than your competition. In order to get the price where somebody would actually buy it, you have to cheapen up the parts. Labor costs and legacy costs can't be lowered, so you are forced to lower your quality. Add to that the constant drumbeat on suppliers to lower costs, and you see what happens. There are retirees who have collected a pension for longer than they worked. It is not all on the unions, although they have certainly become the biggest part of the problem. But nobody held a gun to managements heads to go along with the unions. They are guilty of shortsightedness and more than a little greed of their own. There is simply no way that ANY company can continue to functuion paying unskilled labor the kind of money that the UAW demands. The unions have now taken over education and most government functions and we can see how well that's working out, too. I don't want to sound totally anti-union , but the facts are that the unions evolved from caring about the worker to simply caring about strengthening the union and lining the leaders' pockets.