Painful events can also open doors to new ideas, and in America the end of Detroit's auto industry will cause a lot of pain. The CEOs of Chrysler, Ford and GM paid a visit to Washington last week -- driving hybrid cars, instead of flying private jets -- to ask, again, for billions of dollars in help from American taxpayers.

They flew jets the first time, and American lawmakers advised a lower profile for their second visit. Don't take a taxi to a soup kitchen, they essentially said. The big bosses were scolded like little boys.

But symbolism wasn't enough: After a dramatic series of debates in Congress, the Senate rejected their bid for help. The decision is justifiable, because US auto companies are destitute. They need money, but even more importantly they need managers with a real love for cars. The current culture in Detroit is terminally ill. It has been destroying itself for 30 years. What Congress debated this week was not a rescue plan, as it was officially called, but a multi-billion-dollar assisted suicide.

Ghosts of Cars Past

The year of accelerated economic downturn in America -- Wall Street tarnished, Lehman Brothers dead -- has yet to see its furious finale. An overheated capitalism, which rated seriousness as unimportant and said quality was old-fashioned, has led us to this point. Detroit, unexpectedly, will pose the first serious test for President-elect Barack Obama and his promise of change and hope. Will he throw good money after bad, as powerful voices in his own party advocate? Or will he introduce new management styles and new ideas to Detroit, against the will of the local powers that be? The essential question is not "Will the cash flow change?" but "Will the cars?"

The Big Three auto executives were no longer in a position to keep their businesses running as usual. They were losing money day by day, and no bank in the world would loan them a cent. Even the Saudis and the Chinese said no.

Once upon a time, though, Detroit was to capitalism what the Kremlin was to communism: its fabled beating heart. Henry Ford, just after the turn of the 20th century, had the epiphany of a lifetime during a visit to a slaughterhouse, where he saw dead carcasses moving through the halls on hooks. Every phase of the slaughter was handled by a different group of butchers. One group killed, the other skinned, another cut filets and another handled joints and chops until nothing was left, in the end, but a skeleton.

He applied this principle, in 1913, to automaking. But he started with the skeleton, or car chassis, then added the motor and gearbox, the cables, the windows and finally the doors. At last came the paint and finish -- and the car as a mass-produced symbol of the 20th century was ready for sale.

The Big Three firms in Detroit brought this process to perfection. A neatly orchestrated production line can build the cars, they thought; the rest is marketing.

This mode of thinking has survived unchanged through a number of downturns. The business model now declares that anything unnecessary for driving can be cut or milled away -- and the creativity of years past has disappeared, along with attention to detail. The slouching aesthetics of the cars is just part of the bargain. But the business model couldn't last.

It didn't take long for the industry to suffer its first major losses. Recapitalization, "crisis mode" and talk of a radical cure were already by-words of the 1970s and '80s. Corporate leaders in those days reacted in a big way, but always in the same wrong direction. In times of delusion, one rationalizes. From a labor force of roughly a million workers, two-thirds lost their jobs.

In the end, the last brands of the Detroit family of carmakers -- Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Lincoln -- lost their souls. Since then Detroit has built ghost-cars, often rickety and always cold to the touch. Anyone who wants to understand the depths of the current crisis will need to drive one of these lumbering GM cars. Or meet Tom Wilkinson.

'Fighting Spirit,' or New Ideas?

Wilkinson is the human face of the recent bad news in Detroit. He works in GM's headquarters, and it's his job to announce billion-dollar losses and diminishing market share to the world, to other businesses as well as on TV. These days being director of communications for GM, he says, is a "tough sell," which is another way of saying: It's back-breaking work. To bear up, you need a "fighting spirit."

But Wilkinson is optimistic. Workers just have to give up some share of their salary and benefits, he says, and then everything will be fine. He sees signs of improvement everywhere. Young people are starting to think it's uncool to drive a Japanese car. "My daughter no longer wants a Toyota Corolla," he says.

He says the Detroit auto industry has hired a number of international designers to revolutionize the look of the American car. "It looks like the United Nations in our design center," he says. He promises that Detroit will surprise the world with an electric car, the Chevrolet Volt. "This car will change the game," he says.

What he doesn't say is that the car, at the moment, can't run more than an hour on a full charge. It won't be ready for the streets until 2010.

It's a thin line between optimism and naiveté.

One idea for saving Detroit won't be found in Detroit itself, with its sect-like corporate culture. The slaughterhouse is also not much of a model for the car business today. But a field trip to Seattle might help. While the American car industry faltered, Bill Gates was bringing Microsoft to the forefront of the American software industry. The arc of his career -- from acne-ridden geek to ingenious business leader, billionaire and philanthropist -- is a modern fairytale.

His empire wasn't just quickly built. Microsoft still has the most important element of a successful modern enterprise: perpetual flexibility. Two decades ago, I met the still-youthful Gates in his Seattle office and noticed it was no larger than a corner shop in New York. A young-seeming man sat in front of me who see-sawed on his chair like a kid on a rocking horse. He spoke quietly, thought carefully and listened to himself.

He told me his ideas about revolutionizing the software industry. I understood very little. The young man was feverishly immersed in a world of memory chips and operating systems. But I did notice that he mistrusted himself. He said his most important helpers in business were not software engineers, or even his own talents, but dissatisfied customers. He listened in on his company's phone bank, heard the curses and outraged voices of his customers, and tried to learn something.