For John McVeigh, making cars was not just a job; it was his shot at the American Dream. He had left Glasgow a young, wide-eyed man at 21 and ended up in Detroit, lured by the huge factories churning out the cars that defined 20th century US life.

He started on the factory floor and rose through the ranks. When he retired in 1989 he was part of the management; he had brought up four good children and lived in a nice house in the suburbs. His neighbours' life stories mirrored his.

But after a week in which Ford laid off 30,000 workers and shut 14 factories, McVeigh knows his story is now part of history, like the homesteaders or the goldrushers, a way of life his grandchildren will never know. He winced at the news. 'You can't do what I did now. It just could not happen again,' he said in an accent still coloured by his Scots childhood. The statistics tell a bleak story of economic disaster that has seen a whole corner of north-east America dubbed the Rust Belt. The Big Three - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - have declining market share, crippling pension costs and a product line reliant on deep discounts to sell. Chrysler has been taken over by the Germans and GM posted a $8.6bn loss last week, its biggest since 1992. Ford has been losing market share for 10 straight years. Last week's news was so bad that few people noticed DaimlerChrysler quietly announcing it too was axeing 6,000 staff. At the same time, foreign firms have been invading.

In 1979 the Big Three sold nearly nine out of every 10 new vehicles on US roads. By 2004, as European and Asian firms ate away at their market, only about 50 per cent of the nation's new cars were sold by US producers. By October 2005, cars made by the Big Three accounted for about 40 per cent of the US market, according to Forbes. Toyota, Honda and Korean Hyundai had all made inroads. Even that US archetype the truck saw 30 per cent of its market go to foreigners.

The US car industry is lurching into terminal decline. It means a fundamental part of America has died as well. Nothing has come to symbolise the American century more than the American car. It began with Henry Ford and the Model T and went right through the tail-finned monsters of the Fifties and the hot rods of the Seventies.

American cars were about freedom, sexual liberation and sheer confident patriotism. For young Americans a driving licence and their first Chevy or Ford was the most important rite of passage into adulthood. The car gave birth to other American icons: the motel, the advertising billboard and the diner. They were all children of the road.