About Branding Iron: Branding Lessons from the Meltdown of the U.S. Auto Industry Toyota will soon displace General Motors as the world?s largest automaker. Since 2000, GM?s market cap fell from $66 billion to $15 billion. In 1980 GM sold 45 of every 100 cars that rolled out of showrooms in the U.S. It now sells 26. By any yardstick, that is a crisis. The root cause of this financial... (read more)