Auto Bailouts?

The beauty of market mechanisms is that they weed out bad approaches and promote good ones automatically. Weaker firms are eliminated while better business models succeed. A strange question arises when all the firms doing a particular task fail at the same time. All the major auto makes in north america seem to be doing just that. It's going to be interesting see what might arise from that. A quirky mix of niche cars, and heavy equipment manufacturing and consumer cars coming largely from overseas firms. Is this a case where we'll be better off interviening? Anyone with a background in economics want to share their more educated opinion on helping out the auto industry?
I suppose in the bigger picture, as long as there's still cars being produced and we can still trade something to get them, there's no doom. Though there'll be chaos as the economy tries to deal with the collapse of a major sector and consumers find their way to other names. Then again, after a chat with a few people from other parts of the world, I'm left with the impression that the auto sector in all developed nations is in ruins.