Not true.
Detroit died for a lot of reasons.
One was Nixon signing off the gold standard that exacerbated an already weak dollar.
Oh, noes, we got a Gold Bug!!!!
Two - the high price of gasoline.
Three - the high cost of labor vs. cheap labor in foreign markets. The 70l's union labor/benefits was extremely high at a time when car sales was falling.
Well, no. You almost hit an actual fact here, but you miss a few things. The problem wasn't that gasoline got expensive, it was that Ford and GM and Chrysler didn't want to build fuel efficient cars. So they produced peices of shit like the Chevette and the Escort and the Gremlin and the Pacer that were bad starter cars.
So if your first car was a Chevette like mine was, and it was a piece of crap, when you got a little older and started making more money and unlike your WWII vet Dad, you weren't really upset about Pearl Harbor, you might make your next car a Toyota instead of a Chevy. Which is exactly what a lot of people did.