[Drivesthebeast]

When it comes down to it, the big 3 built mostly crummy cars from the late 70's up until the late 90's, and they lost a lot of "street cred". That "street cred" lost was from developing a word of mouth stigma that they aren't as good as imports in one way or another, lost face value, etc.

Unfortunately, the general car buying public thinks this stigma is the status quo, and are ignorant towards domestics. What I mean is, they won't bother to look at newer domestics which are actually pretty great cars, because they assume they are still gonna be junk, etc etc. That, and a lot of people are too lazy anymore to do some actual pavement pounding and research and testdrive multiple vehicles...they'd rather have the 12th Camry or Civic on their street, because they think the car MUST be good if everyone has one.

I think that reducing the rental fleet sales is a wise choice. Yes, people will see that there are fewer Fords or other domestics in the rental lots, and wonder if something is wrong at first, but after a while, people will think that maybe some of Fords cars aren't junk, or rental worthy only, but perhaps as half decent. Hopefully someone will know what I mean...

My $.02