Let’s look at that purely from the point of view of the quality of cars available a decade ago versus today. And let’s narrow it down some more to focus on the cars in the then largest market in the world – the US.

Frankly, the majority of cars produced in the late 90’s for the American market by the erstwhile Big-Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) were appalling. Design was an afterthought, quality was a foreign concept, and the consumers’ needs were entirely secondary. Scale, and its resultant economies, were the primary focus. Let’s just say that the engineers took a back seat to the accountants, and the car buyers paid the price – literally!

This obsession with scale caused the biggest carmakers in the world to go on an acquisition spree – GM bought Saab and Hummer, while Ford bought Volvo, Aston Martin, and Jaguar Land Rover. And let’s not forget the ill fated, not to mention ill conceived, Daimler Chrysler merger – which was really an acquisition by Daimler Benz of Chrysler for a massive $36 billion dollars.

General Motors failed to see the writing on the wall even when it lost the mantle of being the number one carmaker in the world, a position that it had held for almost 80 years, to Toyota in 2008. Subsequently, GM filed for bankruptcy in June 2009, a few days before compatriot Chrysler followed suit. Ford escaped a similar fate thanks to some forward thinking by Alan Mullally, with the downsizing that came before the downturn. Toyota itself has suffered publicly for chasing scale at the expense of the very virtue that made it number one in the first place – quality.

But the industry is now back on track – the primary focus is once again on the quality of the product. Car companies are more focussed and more manageable. GM sold Saab, and shuttered Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer. Subsequently, it paid a large part of its government loans and filed for one of the largest IPO’s in history. Similarly, Chrysler is expected to repay all its loans six years ahead of schedule, and will eventually be majorly owned by Fiat. But this alliance is a much more pragmatic one than those we’ve seen in the past.

Ford, meanwhile, is leading the way in creating a truly connected car to suit the needs of today’s world. GM itself is creating revolutionary cars like the Chevrolet Volt, which has an internal combustion engine merely to act as a generator for a battery pack that powers the vehicle. And that’s to say nothing of the massive leap in the quality and design of their overall fleets – an evolution that’s true for the industry as a whole.