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As the election watchers take the pulse of the last five undecided voters in Michigan and Ohio and the Fed watchers wait to see whether the insanely unlikely legacy of the Bush administration is a quasi-nationalization of the banks, slipping out from the shadows is yet one more looming and historic inflection point: the end of the Big Three.

OK, it's the Big Two and a Half now that a diminished Chrysler has been bought and spat back by Daimler and scooped up by a private-equity firm. Nonetheless, even after all the years of talk about the transition to the technology economy and the knowledge economy, Ford and General Motors remain potent symbols both inside and outside the country. What we saw happening this week was not just a catastrophic drop in the markets but a drop led by the company that was for most of the century a pre-eminent avatar of U.S. economic strength—and that has now turned irreversibly toward bottom.

The notion that General Motors—or Ford, for that matter—won't last in anything like its present form is not a new one. Fortune writer Carol Loomis called it two and a half years ago, and it has been clear for even longer that when it comes to GM, we have been watching an endgame. Despite all the talk about the transition to a knowledge-and-technology economy, however, it seemed as if the endgame was going to be an awfully slow and protracted one. Yes, it had long been described as a pension fund that happens to have a car company attached. But the car company seemed surprisingly resilient. No longer.

Analysts who quickly went on the air trying to explain the drop in GM's shares to a point not seen since the 1950s pointed out that there seemed to be little news to motivate. But there didn't have to be. GM was a stock that most investors had abandoned ages ago. Its biggest institutional investors were long-term value funds hoping for a turnaround—as well as GM's own pension plan. Some of those funds have already cut their stakes or left the stock entirely. To bring GM down 25 percent takes only a few managers deciding to give up. And Thursday was the day they gave up.

When it comes to Ford, the situation is little different—perhaps worse. Ford is now talking about bringing European compacts and microcompacts across the Atlantic—a sign of panicked despair from a company whose fortunes were tied to the all-powerful F-150 truck. Ford's last best hope was a few more years of cheap oil. Now that's gone, too.

The plants will not suddenly shut down, but, caught between high oil prices and the shutdown of the credit spigot, the automakers have no more room to maneuver. The share prices alone tell you the future that the markets see for the automakers: Think of the airlines with their endless cycle of bankruptcy, and you can picture it for yourself.