Back to the Future: GM Bets on Trucks
  • General Motors Co. has freed up cash to fund a major update of its full-size pickups, a bet that consumers and businesses will resume buying trucks after a long lull in sales.

    Chairman and Chief Executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr. has agreed to fund the move, said GM product chief Tom Stephens. The remodeling could cost the company close to $1 billion, a person familiar with the matter said.

    GM, which had relied on full-size pickups such as the Chevrolet Silverado for a major portion of its U.S. revenue and operating profit, had put off redesigning the trucks


There's two ways to look at this:
  • Taxpayers spent billions bailing the company out so that it could go back to making the same decisions that got it in trouble;
  • The government's demands that car companies produce "green" autos is so much bunk, insofar as the only way for a company to be profitable is to make cars people want, which appears to be big, honkin', trucks

Neither says much in support of the bailout.