A Valid Point In Support of Auto Bailouts?

At a meeting I attended a top Ford Executive made an interesting point: Automakers, he said, wanted to avoid bankruptcy because the mere fact of a bankruptcy filing would reduce new car sales to near-nothing. Thus, he said, they “didn’t want to call it bankruptcy” but would “pay the price” nonetheless. I am against auto bailouts, but he may have a valid point here. I would not buy a car, no matter how well made, from a company in Chapter 11. After all, cars need regular service and any car from a given manufacturer has at least some parts that no other manufacturer uses. If the manufacturer no longer exists, then the car parts might not.
Although plenty of car companies have merged or partially merged to get out of trouble–recent-memory examples include Chrysler and AMC and Renault and Nissan–I can’t think of any auto company anywhere in the world that has entered chapter 11 or its local equivalent and emerged anything other than a hollow shell. Can anyone think of a counter example?