AMERICA’S CAR-SELLING BUSINESS, praise God, is pretty much in full recovery mode now, with some analysts and manufacturers predicting annualized sales for 2015 in the neighborhood of 17.5 million cars. Which will be near an all-time record and quite a swanky neighborhood when you remember that as recently as 2009 the industry considered itself lucky to shift 10.4 million cars in the U.S. for the whole year. From that nadir, sales are up close to 70 percent.
Profits are up, too, as is employment. Share prices are up, executive compensation is way up, and amid the general exuberance, memories of the bad times—the government bailouts, lost brands, devastating layoffs, defunded pensions, plus the cruel, underlying recession itself—are fading in the industry’s rearview mirror faster than the CD players that until…
