In fact, GM is now the most efficient of the U.S. automakers (although it has yet to match the productivity levels of the Japanese manufacturers' nonunion American plants).
The big automaker also has improved the quality of its cars and trucks. J.D. Power & Associates, the Westlake Village firm that keeps track of customer satisfaction, says GM is winning high marks these days.
"They've done an impressive job of revamping whole product lines," says security analyst Ivan Feinseth of Matrix USA, a New York-based brokerage.
And the company is not done yet. GM sees itself as having achieved only 70% of the quality it needs.
To foster its recovery, GM has gone back to basics. It adopted the formula of Alfred P. Sloan, the company's longtime chairman, of producing cars for five economic strata -- from Chevrolet through Cadillac -- and then updated it.
On the factory floor, GM "now uses a single production platform to produce a variety of models and values," Barabba says. New Pontiacs and Chevrolets are thus all born of one chassis. The base of the Cadillac Escalade is the same as that of Chevrolet sport utility vehicles.
Cost savings are wrung out of such processes, which is why GM's auto business is in better shape than it appears. Were it not for the healthcare cost burden, GM's automotive operations would have cranked out enough profit to have more than doubled the $3.7 billion in net income the company reported for 2004.
Which may well explain why GM's Rick Wagoner, who became chief executive in 2000, seems so calm amid all the current fears about the company's future.
When asked whether he is seeking U.S. government relief from GM's healthcare burden, Wagoner, a onetime star basketball player at Duke University, shrugs like a guy who has been through a few pressure situations.
"The reality is we have the legacy costs," he says. The company will get some break, he adds, when Medicare assumes prescription drug coverage for seniors next year.
Wagoner knows that GM's greatest challenge remains producing models that excite customers. That hasn't changed for 100 years.
The aim now is to get folks to buy cars and trucks without offering the big discounts to which the company has resorted of late.
"For us, the incentives have sort of leveled out," Wagoner said recently. Still, he cautioned, "we have to be realistic about competitive conditions for 2005 -- or to be honest, for the rest of our lives."
Tough conditions aren't stopping GM from investing $8 billion this year in plant improvements and research and development. At the end of the decade, the company foresees bringing to market a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle that will give it, once again, the technological lead in the industry.
Meanwhile, Wagoner stresses the firm's successes in China and the rest of Asia, where its automotive operations are profitable. And he talks of new SUVs and other models coming out next year that could spark a vigorous period of growth for GM.
It is more than just spin. Despite some negative headlines, GM is hardly stuck in reverse.
