No, I am sure they would be selling more cars if they had more fuel efficient cars, but that would not change the fact that they are shelling butt loads out for labor, and for Pensions and health care for retired workers.
I mean why do you think they keep sending Jobs over seas? If not because of high labor costs, and Retired worker costs, then why.
It turns out we are both right.....
From Wiki....
"The increase in SUV sales was assisted by a legislative loophole. Created in the 1970s, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were established as minimums for passenger vehicles. Exceptions were granted business and farm vehicles. Car manufacturers utilized this loophole by selling SUVs as work vehicles [[9]]. In the last 25 years, and even more in the last decade, the popularity of SUVs has increased among urban drivers. Consequently, more modern SUVs often come with luxury features and some crossover SUVs have adopted lower ride heights and use unibody construction to better accommodate on-road driving.
Jeep Cherokee: SUV trend-setter.The New York Times's ex-Detroit bureau chief, a recipient of the New York Public Library Bernstein Award for excellence in journalism, has linked the rise of the SUV directly to AMC lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver to the Clean Air Act: as a result, the EPA designated AMC's compact Jeep Cherokee (XJ) a "light truck", which enabled the company to market it to everyday drivers.[2] This in turn led to the SUV boom when other automakers marketed their own imitators in response to the Cherokee taking sales from their regular cars.[3]
[edit] Popularity
SUVs became popular in the United States, Canada, and Australia in the 1990s and early 2000s for a variety of reasons, this trend was known as the SUV craze.
US automakers could enjoy profit margins of $10,000 per SUV, while losing a few hundred dollars on a compact car. [4] For instance, the Ford Excursion could net the company $18,000, while they could not break even with the Ford Focus unless the buyer chose options.[5][6] This led to Detroit's big three automakers focusing resources and design on SUVs over small cars (small cars were sold mainly to attract young buyers with inexpensive options and to increase their fleet average fuel economies to meet federal standards). The high wages of unionized workers in the United States and Canada (members of the UAW and CAW, respectively), compared to non-union workers such as that of Toyota, meant that it was unprofitable to have them build small cars.[7] The General Motors Arlington, Texas factory where rear-wheel drive cars were built, such as the Chevrolet Caprice and Buick Roadmaster, was converted to truck and SUV production, putting an end to full-size family station wagon and overall terminating production of rear-wheel drive full-size cars."