The insightful observations by Jack cannot be discounted, nor can anyone who has been carefully observing the automotive marketplace of the past 20-30 years fail to come to basically the same conclusions. There is a "law of gravity" that pertains to automotive success stories, too. It goes up, therefore, sooner or later, it MUST come back down. We're seeing the down-part for the Japanese. Certainly it is more difficult to detect than the fall from grace of our domestic makers...they slammed into the ground with the force of a falling Airbus, while the current Japanese malaise is more like Sully Sullenberger's relatively gentle splashdown into the Hudson River this summer. But, in the end, both are scored as crashes.