Ford is actually doing pretty well right now. In fact, Lincoln was the only car company this month that was in the green and Ford itself did better than Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Their vehicles are getting much better as well, much less is the way of reported problems vs. vehicles from just a few years ago. If I was going to buy a vehicle from one of the "Detroit 3" right now, it would probably be a Ford.

With that said, Chrysler was just bought by Fiat and is being heavily restructured, so one could say they are slowly on their way back. GM just declared bankruptcy and has around 3 months to work it all out. With that said, GM will still be around as four core brands (Chevy, GMC, Buick, Caddy); they will just have less dealerships and less debt.

Finally, if either company does happen to disappear completely, the government put into place a "Warranty Support Program" that basically means your warranty will be carried over to a third party provider, allowing it to still be valid. Therefore, there is really no reason to worry about whether or not your warranty will be good.

From what I can gather, a lot has been put into place to ensure that the consumer will still be safe buying a Chrysler or GM product. Therefore, I would go for it, especially if what I wanted was from one of GM's core brands or Chrysler/Dodge.

On a side note, resale value is in the s***er no matter what you buy now, be it import or domestic. We bought a $45,000 lexus RX330 new in 2007. Today, with only 18,000 miles on it, it's worth about $25,000. So, we're talking $10,000 a year lost on a Lexus (with less than average mileage), which is supposed to have one of the best resale values out there. If you're going to buy something now it's best to either get rid of it within a year or hold onto it for a long time (saving for a new vehicle along the way.) It's not like it was a few years ago when you could buy something, hold onto it for a couple years, and then buy something new with a minimal loss.