The domestic auto industry’s promised land seems to be China and India. Neither country has a huge, mature manufacturing industry of its own. There are hundreds of millions of people, and very few have cars.

GM (GM) and VW along with joint venture partners are the largest car companies in China, and Ford (F) often talks about how fast it is growing in the world’s most populated country.

Naturally, the attention turns to India as well. In a country with 1.1 billion people. there are only 2.8 million car owners.

The New York Times says that the Transportation Research Institute is about to release a study showing a number of hurdles that the Indian car industry must face before it can begin to see the kind of growth that should be expected in a developing country.

The No.1 problem is “The infrastructure needs to be improved more than you might think", according to one researcher involved in the survey. In other words, the roads are no good.

That may be bad news for India car makers but it is at least as bad for Detroit. GM and Ford do have the capacity to build cars that can be sold in India, at least if their experience in China is any indication.

But, you can’t buy what you can’t drive.

Maybe GM can go into the road building business.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected].

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