So, I have some speculation based on motive.
Mitsubishi pulled out of China today, Toyota (biggest worldwide) forecast from last year was projecting huge dropoff in sales around this time— and with high interest rates, a credit crunch, and the “not a recession,” new cars just aren’t selling.
There’s been a bunch of other news regarding cycling down production, and dealers having issues moving new cars.
So wouldn’t the big 3 in Detroit benefit from shutting the lines down for a couple of weeks to produce a stopgap instead of flooding the dealer lots with unsellable product?
Even if it cost them more in the longrun, they might’ve ran the numbers and thought the publicity from the strike would sell more American cars this year. It’s free press. And companies are shortsighted these days.
The lack of consumer sales is why it didn't get serious for GM, until their truck production got threatened. Those sales are at least moderately healthy.
PR-wise, Ford won, already, and GM stonewalling will cost them, IMO. But, they probably figure we will get forced to bail them out, later, so who cares?
Though, with some vehicles not being able to get made enough, others are selling really well (related: they're all shooting themselves in their feet by cutting small vans for the for the Chicken Tax, instead of making them in NAFTA territory - they have low sales because they were all over a year out before the plandemic, and longer for custom orders). It's almost like people that can spend on new vehicles don't like what's available, at the current prices. Lightly used cars and trucks areiften selling over new MSRP, with new inventory on dealer lots - either the dealers can stop the scalping, or continue selling less. A good example would be the new Ranger, Ridgeline, and Santa Cruz, vs the Maverick. All of them are trying to get light duty suburban pickups to fit into emissions and safety regs, which is very much a square peg and round hole problem. But, one is in vastly shorter supply than demand, consistently.