@oralloy,
your "reality" is interesting (from your business interest POV).
Pontiac and Olds were doomed internally from the late 80's.
When these "badge designs " began swapping cladding and grills and other design ****, all the unique cars began looking alike and so sales suffered waay before the great recession.
There's a lot of Trump similarities with GM. They both were still kinda ossified in their thinking and before the great recession they still were living the "general Bullmoose" philosophy right until they almost tanked (all due to their inabilities to relaunch the designs that once made em great).
Trump, of course has always been the bullshit king of bad decisions, bankruptcy and stiffing contractors . HAd he been smarter he would have made more money by taking his " Fred endowments and bailouts" and merely purchasing Index Funds
The corvette has become a total design with great suspension and aerodynamics . If you REAAALLY want a 10 speed stick shift, Im sure you can always do it after- market the input shaft is still pretty much the same. The really fast cars are now all paddle shift. Even SUVs nowadays have abandoned granny grinds and none have turbo lags. Cars have evolved , we dont need to crank em to start em.
You were just born maybe 50 years too late, tech has moved on quite a bit.Looks and Performace isnt measured in cubic inches anymore, and marketing boys in some makes (like Audi) are listening more and more to customers.