transmission - so exactly the way it was built in 1967.

Meet Ken Grace, my guide to the muscle cars of Detroit. He had one much the same when

he was seventeen. Detroit's teenagers won't have the option

of owning a new Pontiac. General Motors has just killed the Pontiac brand - yet another

sign that one of the world's best known companies and its home town are in desperate trouble.

Back in the '60s and '70s you could see people in the city of Detroit walking the streets,

and the factories were full of cars and full of employment, some running three shifts.

It was an honour to say 'Yeah I'm from Detroit'. A tough city, a lot of issues, but we were

proud because everybody around the world drove our vehicles.

A city which worships the car, doesn't have much of a public transport system.

The monorail,

called the 'people mover', seems more for show than effect, but it does give you an

uninterrupted view of a city in decline. Once the murder capital of America, now businesses

are being killed off and residents have fled. Building after building vandalised or awaiting

the wrecker. Eerily too, the streets of motor city are empty of traffic.

The most striking thing about the centre of Detroit these days is how quiet it is. On

almost every street there are signs of urban decay and a sense of desolation. There's also

disbelief that the three big car companies could be in so much trouble.

Ford, which is in the best shape, recorded loss of $2billion in the first three months

of the year and that was viewed as something of a triumph.

General Motors, once the biggest car company in the world, will have to go into bankruptcy

to survive.There are no companies that are too big to fail.

If Lehmann's can fail with its 100 year history, I think GM can fail, and I don't think it's

too big to fail.

When I moved to Detroit in 1999 this town was rolling in profits from the SUV business.

Everyone got bonuses that year, they even gave out free computers at Ford, and they

had a plane flying around town thanking workers for their great contribution.

I never imagined that in a million years for General Motors, the number one company

in the United States, to be in this predicament, no way.

This is not simply a story of another industrial town falling on hard times

and few know that better than Dick Purtan -- Detroit's veteran, top rating radio announcer

who was spinning discs back in the '60s. So was there a real energy

about Detroit?Oh yeah a big time energy. Remember in those days, Detroit would have been the

fifth largest city in America.

And then I have seen in the... what, 45 years that I have been here, it's gone from 5th

to 6th to 7th to 8th to 9th to 10th and I think currently we're the 11th rated market

or city in America.

Detroit became the emblem of American know how and can do, the capital of US industrial

prowess. But it had more. It had its very own high

But it had more. It had its very own high

energy soundtrack, and like Dick Purtan's listeners, the world

came to love it as well - Motown.

I was thrilled to be here because this was a real happening town. And one of the reasons

it was happening was two reasons, the auto industry was thriving, people were thriving

here big time -- but Motown was booming.

This is an historic city because of motorcars. Motown was adapted from the name, motor city

-- Motown.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas were a big

hit back then. She still belts it out, but has another stage

too, making law as a Detroit city councillor.You know it's a good feeling to have songs

that you recorded when you were twenty one, twenty two years old and then when you sing

them you can feel that young. You can think back and total recall to the day that you

recorded it.

Reeves started recording in Studio A at Motown Records. It became known as Hitsville USA,

borrowing a production style from the car industry.

And in our history, Berry Gordy worked at Ford Motor Company and he thought of running

a company as an assembly line. Once the doors opened, they never shut.

We started up with two tracks, two recording tracks. Went from there to four. Hitchhiker,

Stubborn Kind of Fella, Come and Get These Memories, Almost Like a Heatwave were all

cut with four tracks, and we grew from there. What would have been your favourite hit from

those days that you recorded in Studio A?Oh you can't pick one. We've had some wonderful

recordings and they're like children. Could you give us a burst of Heatwave before

you leave? Come on, a few bars.It's hard to do without the band and the girls but my favourite

part is 'sometimes I stare into space, tears all over my face. Can't explain

it, don't understand it. I ain't never felt like this before.' It's time to go.

Martha Reeves will be among those Detroiters celebrating fifty years of Motown this year,

but she's keenly aware that there's not much to smile about. She's watching her city run

out of gas and its once great institutions being junked.

I have been asked that question, how are we surviving the fact that half of the cars in

our city are foreign, that our cars aren't selling anymore. Our big three are considering

lay offs and buy outs and the industry is not what it used

to be, it used to lead the city.

A forced marriage with Fiat is Chrysler's way out of bankruptcy. The big daddy of them

all, General Motors, looms as the biggest potential disaster. It's closing plants and

desperately negotiating a survival strategy.

People who thought they had secure jobs, are

facing the reality that the wheels are falling off motor city. That's something that you,

you know you feel in your stomach every day. You know you're thinking about it. You can't

get it off your mind, you know? You would want for it just to be over, one

way or the other. Let me know something. Mitch Seaton started working for General Motors

thirty years ago. So what was the image of the company then?

I mean what did you expect if you got a job with GM?

That you would be able to retire, you know, with a certain amount of dignity, you know?

High wages, good benefits, you know. When we were children growing up in Michigan

or in a city of Inkster or Detroit, we always knew that that was the ultimate job to get,

because so many people drove nice cars and had nice homes.

Carmen Seaton also works at GM. Like many families, they've been the backbone of the

car industry for generations. We have so many people. I have four or five

aunts, I have two uncles, I have a sister, two brother-in-laws and actually

two grandfathers that -- both my grandfathers are retirees from the automotive industry.

We're at one of the many branches of the United Autoworkers. The guest of honour is Dick Johnston,

a veteran GM employee. There's a lot of love in the room for the

There's a lot of love in the room for the

committed unionist. Even so, high wages and generous health and pension benefits demanded

by the Union over many decades have been a factor in the car industry crisis.

When I first started, General Motors was really booming. Where I'm working at now in Ypsilanti

- there was 16.... 17 thousand people when it first started. It's gone from that down

to sixteen hundred people, which is a big drop from what it was when I first started.

In the '50s Detroit was booming and they built big monuments like the Spirit of Detroit -- strong

resilient, trusting in God to look after the people -- maybe.

But by the '80s, Japanese and other foreign car companies had started non union plants

in America's south. They were cheaper and more efficient and they were building the

cars Americans wanted.

Former GM executive, Robert Kleinbaum lives

about an hour's drive outside the Motor City.They didn't believe it, because they're so isolated

from the market place. I hope it will be remedied.He says GM ignored public concern about gas guzzlers

and moved too slowly to make greener cars. Wherever there is a situation where you could

do something like really hard and painful, but that would really solve the problem, or

you do the minimum amount necessary, they always chose that latter path, whether

it was with the union or their own capacity, or their management of their own brands, they

were always very reluctant to do the hard things that would really fix the problem.

The whole purpose of bankruptcy, Chapter 11 bankruptcy in North America, is to permit

the kind of restructuring the company desperately needs to do.

The nice thing about Chapter 11 is you can write off your debt, right? So that's the

whole point.Clean slate.So that's the whole point.

Sarah Webster is one of the most influential voices in Detroit, as the automotive editor

of the Detroit Free Press. At what point did you start to realise that

it was reaching crisis point in the industry? I think it was at the end of 2005 that we

started to write about the really enormous layoffs of sixty and seventy plus thousand

workers and I think that that was the time when we started to see that there was a dramatic

change in the workforce taking place.

What's the feeling amongst locals now?It's almost like losing a loved one or something.

They go through all that whole range of emotions you hear about where they're in denial and

then they're angry and then they're sad and depressed.

Drive down almost any street in the inner city and there are boarded up houses and disused

factories.

Once grand buildings like the city's railway station have been abandoned and yet the city

seems powerless to stop urban decay and to reclaim the wastelands.

All this plus a recession which locals say hit Detroit long before the rest of the country.

Of course there are some who prosper even in the worst of times. Jeff Darwish has been

tooling around the suburbs near the Ford factories buying and selling houses for 24 years. He

might feel for the locals but his vehicle of choice is a fancy German import.

We met in Willow Street, Dearborn. This is a middleclass area with good folks,

Ford Motor Company, a lot of people work for Ford right here and

work for the local hospitals and school teachers. It's a good area.So what's happened to the

value of homes?It's plummeted. People have been saying 30%, I'd say more about 40 to

50%. This house here was in its heyday about three

of four years ago worth about 160 to 165, we just sold it for 56 thousand

and I didn't sell it overnight. It took about a month to sell it.

Most locals can't afford new houses or new cars. With sales down by as much as half,

car yards are bulging with unsold stock. Many are the designs of the past, big fuel hungry

vehicles. Dealers are being sacked by the big three car makers and going to the wall.

This city is all about the car. You can't go anywhere or do anything without one. Despite

the gloomy predictions, General Motors reckons it has a sparkling future with some fantastic

vehicles to match. This clutch of designers is looking to the

future.

We've still got a little bit of work to do, but we can actually drive.

By the time the public are presented with

a product we are two, three, four years ahead - we're doing the next cycle of product.

So we're happily in a position where we can always look to the future and recognise that

everyone relies on us for the future and that's our part in saving the company.

As they design the look of the next generation of cars, other teams are working on revolutionary

concepts. The hydrogen powered car is Mark Vann's baby.This is a very special vehicle.

It's a Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell electric vehicle. It uses no petroleum whatsoever and

the only emission is pure water vapour.

So this vehicle is a vital part of convincing

the Obama Administration that this company can be viable.

Absolutely. You know, we look at this as saying that this is our best foot forward. You know,

that in America, you know, a lot of people, you know, have only thought of General Motors

as building large SUVs. We can build very compelling vehicles.

In fact the Obama Administration is now ordering companies which are drowning in red ink to

become cleaner and greener.

Ladies and gentlemen the future of automotive transportation has entered the building.

Another of GMs green options was showcased at this year's auto show in Detroit.

I present the revolutionary Chevrolet Volt.

The Volt as the name suggests is an electric vehicle running on rechargeable batteries and it's due to be on sale from next year.

The Volt's wonderful, but it's not going to be a commercially important car for a very long time.

Commercially important in terms of generating positive cash and the President's task force saw that very clearly.

It's basically five or six years down the road is the time horizon.

GM executives plot the company's future in the tower which dominates Detroit's skyline.

But Washington is in the driver's seat. I would love to get the US Government out of the auto business as quickly as possible.

It was my obligation, and continues to be my obligation, to make sure that any taxpayer dollars

that are in place to support the auto industry,

are aimed not at short term fixes the continue these companies as wards of the state,

but rather institutes the kind of restructuring that allows them to be strongly competitive in the future.

Anxious is not the word. More like a frightening thing, because someone tells you that

your job is over, you have got to make some decisions, well, your life is going to change.

Mitch and Carmen Seaton are putting their faith in the new President.

Back in January, they drove their motor home for 24 hours through a snow storm to witness his inauguration in Washington.

I dug two big trenches all the way out to the street. I figured if I can get it out, you know, if I can get it on