Good to hear from you Lilred!
How's your little darling doing?
As I seem to recall in the 70's, the first Japan imports were generally referred to, (at least in my neck of the woods) as "Jap Crap." The Datsuns, Toyotas, & Hondas were small little rust buckets and not the most reliable.
Then came the gas crunch in 72-73 and folks began seriously looking at foreign automobiles (including the VW bug, Rabbit, etc) and trading in their large "boats" with big block V8's.
In the 80's and especially the 90's, The Big 3 basically churned out the same cars, on the same chassis platforms (save an emblem badge, plastic grill cover or some other purely cosmetic effect) to distinguish amongst the model offerings. The foreign competition, spent the money of retooling and listened to the consumer, churning on completely redesigned automobiles every few years. Big 3 didn't do this. The average American said, now why in the world why I buy a new model when it looks exactly like my three year old model sitting in my driveway?
Another thing happened: The foreign competition started to get pretty good products out too. Folks soon started to talk with their friends and neighbors about how many miles their particular flavor of Yin & Yang was getting to the gallon. Oh, did I happen to mention that it also has 170K miles on the original engine and tranny? Yep, all I do is change the oil nowadays. Not the most comfortable car to ride around in, I mean, compared to my Buick Electra 225 but the thing just runs, and runs, and runs. I'm saving $65 a month in gas and don't have the huge periodic maintenance expenses either.
Meanwhile, whilst all the above is unfolding, the UAW union is squeezing management for higher benefits, most noticably, pension benefits. Sacrifices are made in other salary pay areas for workers for the promise of longer term retirement benefits. Management figures out that his profit/earnings ration is higher having some foreinger in another land assemble a door panel for 1/3 the cost as here in the US and voila! This effectively puts and end to the US automobile. The Big 3 went from foreign components to full sub-assemblies in their plants. This further eliminated jobs.
As the years rolled by, Big 3 has almost caught up in some areas to the quality of their competition, but the word has spread like wildfire for the past decade about the virtues of the foreign automobiles and the foreign competition has grabbed more than half of the available market share. Consumers will pay extra for what is perceived as a superior crafted quality product.
There are many, many other parts of this story as you are all aware but this was by and large how things played out around the Midwest US.