They are probably more likely to merge than outright fail, barring a bigger-than-normal recession.

Good riddance to FCA and Ford, though I honestly have a hard time seeing Ford fail completely given the success of their trucks in the US.

I'd be sad to see Nissan go.

I have no idea how Mitsubishi hangs on; they're just too small a player now. What they really should do is get out of the car business, and jump into the airliner business. The market is screaming for alternatives to Boeing and Airbus. Boeing has proven itself untrustworthy, and Airbus just doesn't have the production capacity to handle increased orders. On top of that, I'm sure ANA and JAL would love to buy domestically-made airliners if they could.

Swap Ford with GM and you're right on the money

I think you meant add GM.

Of course, the US may sail in and prop those two up. Kind of a "Too political to fail" type thing. But on their own, absent help like that, yeah, I don't really see how they make it without some sort of market event. Failure, fire sale merger, etc.

>I can't imagine any upstart without any compelling unfair advantage/killer product is going to fair well

Vietnam doesn't really care too much about WTO rules, so they provide not only enormous resources to their firms through the back door, but also slap enormous tariffs on foreign auto dealers at the front door.

So yeah, what we may term unfair advantage, they call command capitalism.

The timing could be better, but you have to understand, it's hard to find anything to do with massive wealth in Vietnam. You either start a car company or you blow it on black market Rhino horn for your hangovers.