What went wrong??

For years the American car companies have been telling us what we want, not listening to what we want. A buddy of mine had an '03 Dakota, stripped out, 4.7 with the 6-speed. Now they've upped the horse, but available only as an automatic. The Chargers? Autos. The old Dak R/Ts? Autos. Everything comes as an option package and if you want something you have to give up something else because it's in a different option group. Go to dodge's website and build the SRT of your dreams. Can't do it. You'll find that even with the SRTs you have to give something up to get something else.
Now let's navigate all those packages, shall we? What's the deal with all the levels of packages with the LT, the SLT, the Laramie, the Long Horn, the Big Ram, the Track whatever, the Short *****, the Long *****, the Hemi in this truck available with the stick, the Hemi in this truck only with the auto, the 6.7 in this truck available with 3.92s but not 4.10s. Keep It Simple, Stupid! Why should I have to hire a design engineer, a rocket scientist, a lawyer, a maid, and a homeless person to navigate all this s*** because even the salesman is confused by it all? And the Mustang is even worse! Do you want the base model, the GT, the Shelby GT, the CS, the Bullitt, The Rousch base, the Rousch 427R, the P51, the Shelby GT500, the KR, the Super Snake or the Super Snake with no warranty? Oh, by the way, the GT, the CS, and the Bullitt are all the same car, but you can only have the CS in orange with the CS call outs, the Bullitt is only available in green and they both have interior packages and wheels you can only get on them and not the GT, but you can have the GT with better options than the other two.
Throw into the mix dealerships who take long term customers for granted, ("Oh, I've been buying my cars here since 1952"), salesmen who wouldn't know a car if it ran over 'em and you'll see that the American car companies have screwed themselves into a whole.
American quality suffered for years. Remember the K-car? Or the early Taurus? The transmissions we've had to put up with? Honda's auto is basically a converted stick. Subaru's boxer engine that's simplicity personified? I've had Subaru tranny's out and on the bench in 45 minutes. Ford seems to have a design flaw that says "how complicated can we make this?" GM has gone to an aluminum cradle to lighten everything up under the CAFE standards but all the welds pop and snap that makes the customer think that his suspension is coming apart.
American quality has rebounded big time over the long in the tooth, let's make-everything-cheap-base-every-car-on-the-K-car-platform of Iacocca. But a lot of Americans still remember those days. They got sold on Honda and Toyota 20 years ago and it stuck. Unfortunately.