Has CAFE killed GM?

Lot's of folk, especially those who work for GM think so. They claim that to get the average fuel mileage up, GM produces scads of econo box cars that loose money. Less CAFE, GM could concentrate on Silverado pickup trucks and Chevy Surburbans which are profitable. Right.
Unfortunately, those little econo boxes make up the bulk of the cars on the road as I drive to work each day. That swirling mass of Rt 128 traffic is three quarters small sedans, like Corolla. The real volume sellers aren't pickups and SUV's, it's econo boxes. For GM to stay in business, it has to compete in the volume market, or go out of business. Unfortunately the GM suits still don't understand this, and so they whine about CAFE making them build the type of car that most people buy.
It may be that making money in the small car business is harder than building big cars. People won't pay as much for a small car as a big car. But small cars are nearly as expensive to manufacture as big ones. Small cars have roughly the same number of parts as big ones. These parts have to be made or purchased, and assembled. Small parts cost about the same as big ones, and it takes the same amount of labor to install them. So your profit margin on small cars is always going to be tight, but plenty of companies (Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Volkswagen for example) have shown that it can be done.
The Detroit companies have to offer small cars as desirable as Civic and Corolla at competitive prices. Or go out of business.