You are both correct.
Problem A: smaller, independent companies are able to built interesting innovative cars, but there is always not enough financial power behind them them.
@weasel: just look in the history. At least all (app.99%) of smaller car-companies aren't existing any more. Or just as brands inside a mega-company, which is no independence either.
Where are the plenty of British car companies? Where are Borgward, NSU, Glas? Where is Panhard? Where are Packard, Kaiser, Studebaker?
Problem B: The big, multinational companies are too big. Too many employees in too many countires. Don't forget the mental differences!
- DaimlerChrysler was a desaster. Too different brands, too different cars, too different cultures
- Saab lost its independent style after GM took it over. In Europe, I think, in the importan US-market, too, Saab was a car for fanatical individualists with money, who never would like to have a "mainstream" or "conservative" car like Mercedes, Opel or Cadillac. So these old Saab-customers were pissed about the behaviour of GM.
- Similar problems at Opel. The Opel-workers -the VW-people, too!- have two times in their mind, "pre Jose Ignacio Lopez" and "post Jose Ignacio Lopez". In the 90ies he and his guys were a big theme in the German medias. He was a hard, tough "cost-killer", who pressed the subcontractors and their prices very violently.
The final reason was at least, that the quality was going worse. And in Germany the quality is a big thing for the car-buyers, especially if you talk about famous national car-makers like VW, Mercedes Benz and Opel (yes, it's GM since 80 years, but it was always seen at a German company).
Ineed, VW's and Opel's from the Lopez-era were worse than before. Cheaper quality, less reliability. Opel feels this until today. In the early 90ies, pre-Lopez Opel had 17% of the German market, after Lopez it collapsed on 9%. Now it's just 7%.
And Opel had the most problems, when its CEO's were US-Americans and not Europeans. These guys have looked more to Detroit and the shareholder-value and not on the quality and market-position. They neglected the German developments and took over more from the USA. And they coudn't understand, that the Germans don't like that. In the history Opel -Ford, too!- got problems on the German market, when the style of their cars (and especially the quality!) were "too American". The people here don't like that.
Today we see the results harder than ever before.
Look at Mercedes. A real Mercedes-customer had never looked at Chrysler. During the DaimlerChrysler-times both brands were standing in the same showroom, but there was always a hidden border. Mercedes-salesmen and -customers have ignored them and to people, who had been only interested in the Chryslers, they have looked askew.
