To his surprise, Mr. Wagoner agreed.

AFTER Ford rejected G.M.’s proposal, Mr. Henderson felt as if someone had popped his balloon. So much for the event that would convince Wall Street to lend to G.M. “That would have been the catalyst,” he would recall later. “You could actually use it to raise capital because the amount of synergies would be massive. Massive!”

Now he felt a growing sense of dread. He had been counting on Ford to be a lifeline. At this point, he knew G.M.’s financial status better than anyone, even Mr. Wagoner. He couldn’t blame Ford for slamming the door. His idea might have worked, he said later. “But sitting in their shoes, I could understand why they didn’t want to do it,” he said. “It wasn’t a simple call for them.”

Mr. Lutz was disappointed to hear how the Ford meeting had gone. To him, a merger would prove once and for all that an American company could whip Toyota, or anyone else. “It could be one large, enormously powerful global automobile company,” he had argued. “You could shut one proving ground, one finance department, one tax department, a bunch of plants, get rid of a lot of engineering. We could get rid of the fixed costs even before the acquisition.”

Mr. Wagoner didn’t even want to talk about it. He had tried and failed. Move on, he figured. It was another example of G.M.’s dysfunction at the top. There was something missing among Mr. Wagoner, Mr. Lutz and Mr. Henderson, some chemistry or cover-my-back mentality. They worked together, but not “together,” as the Ford guys did.

Nobody outside the tight inner circles at G.M. and Ford knew of the secret meeting. To much of the world, the two companies were joined at the hip, Detroit’s version of Dumb and Dumber. The public and cable TV’s talking heads were no longer distinguishing among the Big Three. It was everybody’s turn in the barrel.

That was driven home with the financial results for the 2008 spring quarter: an $8.7 billion loss at Ford, the worst quarter in its 105-year history, and a $15.5 billion loss at G.M., its third worst in a century. The numbers were staggering. G.M.’s revenue in North America had fallen $10 billion — a breathtaking 33 percent — from the year-earlier quarter. Ford took an $8 billion charge just to write down assets. The whole United States car market had imploded.

Yet G.M.’s board seemed to be in denial. The lead director, George Fisher, jumped to the company’s defense. “I’m reading too much stuff in the papers these days that is wrong,” Mr. Fisher grumbled in an interview. “It’s a distraction to the board and a distraction to management.” Was G.M. headed for bankruptcy? “The answer is no, absolutely not,” he said.