And speaking of car crashes...

... or rather, car manufacturer crashes:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Credit markets weathered an uneasy Wednesday punctuated by word that beleaguered General Motors Corp. (GM) won't make a scheduled $1 billion interest payment.

From the Wall Street Journal, via Sapiens in this iTulip thread. More details here.

So what does this mean? Bankruptcy seems almost certain now; and they've announced that they're closing their US plants for 9 weeks this summer. Meanwhile, Ford seems to be doing a lot better:

April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. rose 13 percent in New York trading after Goldman, Sachs & Co. advised buying the shares, citing likely bankruptcy filings for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Ford will gain U.S. market share from GM and Chrysler, and the stock may climb 58 percent to $6 within 6 months, Patrick Archambault, a New York-based analyst, wrote in a research report. Goldman previously had a “neutral” rating on the second-largest U.S. automaker.

“The stage is set for a sea change in the structure of the U.S. auto industry,” Archambault wrote. “We do not foresee bankruptcy at Ford, which we believe has sufficient liquidity to make it through to 2010 without additional funding.”

As for Chrysler, the question is probably better not asked. Ford may well end up being the last US automaker standing. If nothing else, there might be some huge bargains on houses in Windsor, St. Catharines, and Oshawa pretty soon...