Not good. No doubt GM's uncharacteristically cataclysmic language is aimed at Congress, the Bush administration and the soon-to-be Obama administration: Move quickly on a bailout package for Detroit or the mother of all bankruptcies is likely to come crashing down on American-owned automakers, their suppliers and all the people who depend on them.

The mess would give new meaning to the word 'ugly,' an industrial collapse more far-reaching than the unwinding of steel in the 1970s or textile mills down South. Jobs lost. Tax revenue gone. Pensions, retiree health care benefits and a union's viability endangered. Industrial capability, even national security, could be imperiled.

In his first news conference as president-elect, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama singled out the automakers as the 'backbone' of American manufacturing, called them an important ally in helping the country achieve energy independence and urged that efforts already under way to aid the automakers be accelerated.

He didn't need to say more because the message was clear: His administration and the next Congress, solidly in Democratic control, do not intend to deny Detroit's pleas, however much its many critics say they should.

Would Detroit be different?

Which raises an important point: The voices justifying a taxpayer bailout for Detroit -- the automakers, their politicians, economists, some in the news media -- bolster their arguments with the 'lesser-of-evils' riff.

Pumping $25 billion or $50 billion into the core automotive sector as a 'bridge' to better times, the thinking goes, would be a whole lot less expensive and less economically disruptive than standing back and watching a succession of companies parade into bankruptcy court (assuming they could finagle debtor-in-possession financing from semi-frozen credit markets).

But how can those same voices, and the lawmakers listening to them, be assured the Detroit automotive claque with its collective hand out would be leaner, more competitive, more financially robust -- more like Toyota or Honda -- on the other side of this perfect storm?

Would the GM with eight U.S. divisions that slipped into the current abyss, for example, be stronger, smaller and profitable should it emerge from the other side? How? Are the executives who steered GM, Ford and perhaps Chrysler (if it survives) into federal arms the right people to steer them out? If so, why?

As much as I may agree that bailouts trump bankruptcies here, I'm not at all sure GM or Ford -- and certainly not the woefully enigmatic Chrysler -- have made a persuasive case to taxpayers that their money would help ensure a different Detroit auto industry emerges from this unprecedented financial crucible.

Nor do I hear United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger pledging to taxpayers his intention to make the union, its contracts or its work rules more flexible, more attuned to this century and not the last. It's one thing for GM and Ford shareholders to perpetuate the jobs bank, for example, or fund retiree health care benefits. But it's another thing entirely to expect U.S. taxpayers to do so.

The simple, uncomfortable fact is the auto industry in America that has prospered, grown, built plants and created jobs across the country is foreign-owned -- Japanese, Korean and German. It has employed American workers operating in American plants which, until very recently, were routinely profitable. And those companies claimed more market share each month as Detroit surrendered more.

Could the rescue be too late?

These are automotive realities that cannot be denied, that members of Congress see in their districts even as GM, Ford, Chrysler and the UAW ask them to bankroll their bailout. The misimpression, however, would be in assuming Detroit has ignored the competitive threat, that it doesn't 'build cars people want to buy,' that its product quality still can't measure up to the best of the rest.

Not true, and it hasn't been for some time. What is true, though, is that Detroit (management and union leadership) did not move soon enough or fast enough to dramatically overhaul a business model long ago proven to be broken. A central question: Is it too late to survive, if not prosper?

For at least one of the Detroit Three -- most likely Chrysler -- the answer is yes, it probably is too late. Financial reality, as millions of Americans have learned the past few months, can be harsh, unforgiving and swift, even for the most storied American corporate icons.

We know the collapse of Detroit's automotive-industrial complex would shake the national economy to its core. Less knowable is whether a New Detroit financed by taxpayers would become the American juggernaut it should be, but isn't.