(Photo, GM CEO Rick Wagoner, left, and Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Show at the group's annual Las Vegas convention. Sharing the stage is the GM/Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid concept, now a dead issue unless GM gets a cash infusion which some analysts say must be close to $22 billion, otherwise the company will be history).

The “saving” of the American auto industry has become a comedy of errors, a circus with

seemingly no good end in sight.

Feeling somewhat helpless about it all, I decided, in that great American business tradition, to send a memo!

Memo - To Rick Wagoner (GM), Alan Mulally (Ford) and Robert Nardelli (Chrysler):

1) You’re all fired.

Please leave this memo behind for the new leaders of your companies.

2) America doesn’t trust you.

Most Americans think you have brought this disaster upon yourselves, with inferior, irrelevant products the past 35 years.

3) Stop fighting.

Since 1970, when the EPA and NHTSA were created, you have fought tooth-and-nail every advancement and improvement in your industry.

In doing so, you’ve wasted untold billions of dollars and the efforts of thousands of your

smartest and highest-paid employees.

4) Don’t build what we don’t need.

Shoe-horning your biggest V8 engines into full-size trucks and SUVs, because it was an easy way to make hundreds of millions of dollars, is wrong.  And selling them to an audience conditioned to buy them is also wrong.

(Photo above right, what possible statement Chrysler is making with this shot of their newest Ram truck atop a Dodge flatbed escapes me. Why hand it out to the media? It can only result in bad jokes. Photo, above left, Robert Nardelli was hired by Cerberus to run Chrysler, but with no experience in the car business, one wonders why they really hired him for this job; Cerberus also hired Jim Press, highest-ranking American in Toyota/Lexus/Scion, a great hire, but he has to report to Smilin' Bob, and we haven't seen Press' name in the news lately. He might be biding his time until his contract is up; he is a very smart guy).

To see all 10 reasons why Detroit needs to get the money and the trust of Americans now: MEMO TO DETROIT: CHANGE NOW OR DIE!