A teetering General Motors Corp. says it needs $12 billion in cash -- a third of it by the end of this month -- and a $6 billion credit line to make it into next year.

Would it be enough?

Chrysler LLC, its monthly sales off worse than GM's, says it will need "immediate liquidity support" of $7 billion to reassure customers, encourage dealers and make it into next year. Would it come soon enough?

And Ford Motor Co., Detroit's darling of the moment, says it's OK for now. But it wants the ability to access up to $9 billion in government credit should, say, GM fail and take the entire domestic auto industry down with it in one cataclysmic collapse.

What if Ford is too optimistic?

Four quick thoughts to the most detailed corporate striptease this town has ever seen: It's far worse than many thought, especially at GM. Second, "the Big Three automakers" are not a monolith mired in identical dire straits, as the Senate Banking House Financial Services committees will see later this week.

Third, members of Congress hoping for an easy call on the Detroit loan package won't get one -- and some of them are likely to be scared stiff after they read the automakers' plans, particularly GM's 37-page doozy that could have been subtitled "Prelude to the Apocalypse."

And most importantly: Would GM's chunk of a proposed $25 billion bridge loan to Detroit's automakers (Do I hear $30 billion? Or maybe $35 billion?) be even close to enough to keep the largest automaker afloat until school lets out in June? Consider that question No. 1 at congressional hearings Thursday and Friday.

The brutal truth about the plans being sent to Washington from Detroit is that all three companies are in a race that pits time against cash, with the biggest variables being consumer confidence and credit availability. All three companies, as members of Congress will learn this week if they pay attention, are at different points in the race.

That's apparent in four important ways -- the cash on their respective balance sheets, the breadth of their U.S. product lines, the tone of their congressional plans and their public postures toward the United Auto Workers. The union's members today will hear the enormity (and immediacy) of the crisis facing their jobs, retirements, employers and the viability of it all.

The UAW, an equally important institution with a strong ties to Democrats and the incoming Obama administration, will need to choose its words and courses of action carefully over the next few days. Why? Because how it sounds to those living and working outside the Detroit bubble could be as key to the victory or defeat of the rescue loans as the automakers' plans themselves.

Protesting that the members have "already given enough," or that last year's contract established two-tier wages and a union-controlled fund to cover retiree health care, doesn't do any good when the companies aren't hiring, cash is evaporating and GM, for one, is seeking a delay in funding retiree health care.

In this, you can see the Big Three monolith split into pieces. Ford says it expects to make its $13.2 billion contribution by the end of next year. GM says it wants to renegotiate the terms and, additionally, that its turnaround plan assumes "changes in wages and benefits to achieve full competitiveness" by 2012.

Skeptics may detect in this crisis an attempt to unwind union gains and break the UAW. That might be more persuasive if UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and his political allies weren't so rock-solid behind the auto loan campaign. He knows what others may choose to deny -- that without GM or Ford, chiefly, the UAW as a promise and as an institution would cease to exist.

More than a generation ago, one of Detroit's three automakers -- Chrysler Corp. -- faced an existential crisis. Management and union sacrificed. Lee Iacocca made the public case. The president of the United States got involved. Congress guaranteed the loans, got paid back early and made a profit on its warrants in the automaker.

This is worse than then. To read GM's "Restructuring Plan for Long-Term Viability" is to envision an economic future that would turn Michigan's lost decade into a generation lost to widespread joblessness, stagnant home prices, declining tax revenue, fleeing residents and a shattered civic psyche.

Of course, that's partly GM's point. Throughout, its tone is a matter-of-fact "shock and awe," a prediction that catastrophe would be upon us by the time the auto show opens next month if the automaker doesn't get $4 billion by Christmas.

"Absent such assistance," GM said, "the company will default in the near term, very likely precipitating a total collapse of the domestic industry and its extensive supply chain, with a ripple effect that will have severe, long-term consequences to the economy. Regionally, a failure at GM would devastate Michigan and other Midwest states. ... "

And bankruptcy? The mere speculation of it is crushing GM, prompting dealers to cut orders. Which means GM needs more cash to offset plunging revenue. Which means only government intervention, based on a draconian, if risky, turnaround plan, could revive confidence.

Otherwise, the spiral continues and a whole lot of people stand to lose, big.