Automotive News reported today that the domestics’ market share could slip below 50 percent for the first time this month. As little as five years ago few analysts thought this would happen.

General Motors in particular has been losing market share since hitting a peak back in 1962, and more quickly since 1982 or so.

I spent nearly two years inside that company back in the mid-1990s, observing how they consider the customer when developing new products. I gave them a full report at the time (executive summary here). Some people were very enthusiastic about acting on the results, but I doubt much came of it.

In the years since then, despite some product improvements, the slide in Detroit’s market share has actually quickened, averaging two percent per year. During the late 1990s and the first years of the new century, I figured this slide would be temporary, that it some point it would have to slow. But it has not.

Yes, Detroit is doing some things better. The products look better, they perform better, and they have lower repair rates. But the improvements haven’t been large enough, or come quickly enough. After all, the competition also keeps getting better. It’s not good enough to simply improve on the previous product.

Thinking back to my time inside GM, for most of the people working there it was just a job. There were problems, but those were somebody else’s fault, and somebody else’s responsibility.

That said, many people inside GM were truly upset about GM’s continued slide, but I also found that the more a person cared about GM’s plight and tried to do something to fix it, the more frustrated they tended to be. It was very hard for anyone to get anything done.

I have seen signs that the situation is better inside the company these days. The newer products include thoughtful details that would have never made it to production a decade ago. The new large crossovers are attracting notice from people who haven’t thought about a domestic product in years. But it remains clear that the products and the associated marketing activities could be much better than they are, and I suspect that the root problem remains working conditions inside these companies.

It’s past time for the people in charge of the Detroit manufacturers to wake up and fully realize that major changes need to be made. Above all else, it needs to be easier for those who care about making a difference and who know what needs to be done to get it done. It should be clear at this point that incremental improvements to the organization and the resulting products aren’t cutting it. If these companies remain fundamentally the same, Detroit’s slide will have no bottom.