Mr. Garten said he was stunned by the scope of the intervention that Washington was now considering. “I don’t know that we’ve seen anything like this since the government told the automakers what kind of tanks to make during World War II,” he said. “And that was just for the duration of the war — this could be for much, much longer.”…

The first $15 billion and the car czar who oversees it, however, are only the beginning. “After that, we’re in uncharted water,” said Malcolm S. Salter, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School who has studied the auto industry for two decades and, until a few years ago, was an adviser to General Motors and Ford. “Think about this: Who in the federal government would have the tremendous insight needed to fix this industry?”