...why would a company producing great cars be....in trouble?
'Cause even companies making awesome cars screw up. Porsche nearly went bankrupt in ~1990 when the market for high-end cars literally collapsed. Their model line-up in 1990 was full of awesomeness, but no one could afford them.
Exactly. Everyone buggers up from time to time.
My sister had a 1984 VW Rabbit diesel. It made Dad's 1982 Escort look like an absolute paragon of reliability. By 1990 it was almost completely oxide and couldn't pass an NB safety inspection, so it was scrapped.
VW almost pulled out of NA in 1993, because they only sold a total of 50k cars. Fiat group left, so did Citroen (earlier), Alfa, Peugeot and Renault. The only thing that saved them were government interventions. I won't even mention the cars produced by the UK.
If it hadn't been for the cash infusion from the Daimler-Chrysler merger, lord knows what would have happened to Mercedes after all the crap they sold in the mid to late 1990s.
barrie got endless abuse because he couldn't get over a rust heap of a Honda Civic he had... in 1976.