• Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Friday, July 10, 2009 9:25 AM

General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy. Documents creating the sale of most of the old GM's assets to a new company owned chiefly by the U.S. government were executed about 6:30 a.m. in an attorney's office in New York, reports Tim Higgins.

CEO Fritz Henderson says that the new GM will focus on "customers, cars and culture," with the customer at the center of the revamped company's universe. Among GM's initiatives will be a "Tell Fritz" Web site launching next week. He also announced an e-Bay-like online auction program. Also, GM will erase the word "competitive" from its vocabulary, Henderson says, instead striving to build "best in class" vehicles in all categories.

"The key challenge is going to be on the marketing side," Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, tells Higgins. "That would be to convince the consumers of two things: No. 1, that the products are good and, No. 2, that the company is around and healthy."

Spinella worries that marketing spending will be too low over the crucial next three to six months, but Christie Nordhielm, associate marketing professor at the University of Michigan, points out that GM needs to identify its long-term strengths. "Toyota is about reliability. BMW is about performance. What is GM about?" she asks.

Although J.D. Power & Associates reports that the quality gap between U.S. automakers and their foreign rivals is as small as it has ever been, "the American public isn't ready to believe that," analyst John Wolkonowicz tells Jim Puzzanghera and Martin Zimmerman in the Los Angeles Times story Wolkonowicz thinks GM needs a dramatic new consumer initiative. "They need to announce something spectacular that says, 'Thank you, America, for hanging in there with us,'" he says.

Meanwhile, GM already "has a hit car on its hands," theNew York Times reports, in the new Chevy Camaro. Drivers took home 9,300 Camaros in June -- more sales than the entire Buick or Cadillac divisions could muster on their own. With its long hood, rakish grille and brawny fenders, the muscle car is tapping into nostalgia some drivers have for the glory days of the American auto industry, Bill Vlasic and Nick Bunkley write .

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