[tgagneguam]

I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at above. But, all things being equal, I would have expected GM market share to decline over the last 20 years - numerous new players have entered the US auto market in the last two decades. The pie is only so big. I think it would be unreasonable to expect GM to hold on to 50% of the market now that we've gone from three players (GM, Ford and Chrysler) to like 30

Psst, windvale, don't tell that to Microsoft, Intel, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart. Despite new competitors, they seem to do well holding onto their market share... and even growing in some cases. To be clear, GM did not lose market share because it was building strong product and newer companies came in and magically took share. They lost share because they were building garbage. If they were pleasing their consumers, consumers would not have had a reason to flee the company. Saying that GM share fell because the market was getting crowded is a cop-out; they built crap, and their share fell. They're building better product now, and their retail share is holding. See how that works?

Toyota is actually one of the older competitors in the US market now; it's been around for 50 years in the US. Despite new entries like Hyundai and Kia (and GM's own Saturn!) coming in after Toyota did and offering products in the same exact market as Toyota fields its products, Toyota really hasn't retreated. It may have had a few bad months recently, but if you follow the growth curve for Toyota over the past several decades, both before and after Hyundai's and Kia's entries into the US market, you will nicely see that these two companies had very little effect on Toyota sales. Funny, Saturn hasn't really grown over the past decade or so, either.