Your senario would be the demise of the company based solely on the companies own actions. Investing into your employees is single handedly the most important and impactful thing you can do as a business owner to increase revenue, prevent expensive turnover, and keep customers returning. 

Many small businesses currently pay their workers more than min. wage because they know the benefits of doing so. If a business is okay with paying their employees starvation wages, while maximizing efficiency, production, and sales, its better for their business to fail. 

Maybe they can get into uncertified used car sales? Sounds more up their ally.