OK Here is the thing.
Once upon a time there was a depression.
It was about the same that started this recession, very tight credit.
A number of car companies couldn't get credit to make the cars that "would sell" while they had hundreds sitting in their inventory that wouldn't sell.
A very bright guy who owned a dealership and had sold a lot of cars but had none to give to the customers heard that the company who made the cars that he sold didn't have the money to pay for the payroll of the workers which meant his dealership would not get the cars he already sold.
So this bright guy go on a train and went to the owners of the company and said "I will cover the payroll, but I want to run things" and they said Sure
So the first thing he did was to liquidate the inventory that didn't sell, lowing the price of the cars by a lot to move them out and produce revenue.
He succeed in getting the company on its feet in a few years and was the second largest manufacture of car, surpassing GM and the rest of the companies out there.
Now the problem is he was bright until he tried to copy GM and that is where he got into trouble. The bankers who he borrowed money hied some train engineer to straighten it all out and he did ... sort of...
This was also practiced by another smart guy who took the unsold inventory, repainted some of them and lowered the prices on all of them to sell them fast to get them out of inventory. He had a vision, not like these idiot car company leaders, he ended up leading the world with the nearly most expensive, the most powerful and the most refine cars of that day.
Now the big deal with this BS move by the government is why didn't the car companies lower the price of the cars in the first place. If GM would have lowered the price of say the entire Chevrolet line back just before they started to beg for money, we would have seen sales rise. But instead we have this BS program that actually is abused, fleets are turning in pickups, there are people buying those dreaded SUVs and so on.
