This would have made a great poll. Anyway, I vote for option 2.
If they can't meet Chapter 11, "going concern" criteria, tuff. Let them liquidate. I suspect some billionaire or private equity group right here in the good ole USA would snap them up.
Some FOREIGN company will feed off the corpse, I expect.
The investor(s) who bought the bones could probably (HA!) still get X$ from Uncle Sam to retool and make a go of it. Additionally, I think a lot of special confederation, including national security, would go into any such sale of assets.
Yes, by all means let the cows get into the corn THEN chase them out.
I also think this would only happen to 1 company, most likely GM, and to be honest, I rather support the temporary unemployment compensation effort resulting from it than literally waist billions of dollars on GM. The other 2, Ford and Chrysler, would suddenly become much healthier companies with little to no assistance from US.
According to the experts I'm listening too, if GM goes down, their suppliers go down then Ford and Chrysler ALSO go down.