• Detroit Free Press, Monday, January 10, 2011 10:30 AM

That's "P" for "paranoid." The 62-year-old former Navy officer works late and brings it home. He concedes to being a worrier and asked GM brass to pick up a copy of "Only the Paranoid Survive."

Said he, "It's very healthy to have respect for your competition and for the exogenous event that you don't expect." Dan Akerson, who predicts that gasoline will pass $4 per gallon by 2012, says positioning the auto giant for that eventuality is a top priority. He said GM will be able to double the number of Chevrolet Volt electric cars it makes this year to 20,000.

And he is also looking to the past with an eye toward not repeating mistakes, such as badge engineering, which plagued the company for years when it figured it could make cosmetic changes to a Pontiac and sell it as a Buick. He has a framed cover of an '80's-era issue of Fortune magazine that shows a kick line of four red Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick and Oldsmobile models that are essentially the same.

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