Americans much better automobiles

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Henry Ford started at the beginning of the last century with four wheels and a running board; 1908 was the birth of American car culture. That same year, General Motors was formed in Flint, Michigan. It wasn't until 1925 when the "Big Three" was complete with the formation of Chrysler Corporation.

JOHN DAVIS, HOST, MOTORWEEK: When the Big Three emerged, they not only emerged as rivals that really gave Americans much better automobiles at the time, but they also cemented the American automobile as a world standard.
ROMANS: "As goes General Motors, so goes the nation." That phrase defined America's economic power for much of the last century.
PETER MORICI, ECONOMIST, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: So many folks were either employed at General Motors or the other two major car makers, making steel and all the other components that go into cars. It just meant that if the automobile companies were prospering, the country was prospering, too.
ROMANS: Today, there are 74,000 rank-and-file GM workers in the U.S. But in its heyday, GM was the largest industrial company in the world; a technology leader. By 1979, 600,000 people worked for GM. Those good jobs helped build America's middle class.
DAVIS: It also allowed us to migrate out from the cities to have the quarter lot in a suburb, to basically get away from a lot of the congestion of the metropolitan areas.

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