Barra’s desiGn
chief, ed WelBurn,
recently picked
his favorite
chevys of all
tiMe. here are five
of theM.
Five
From the
archives
oversees everything from the contours of a Chevy
that might not hit the market for several years to the
performance of a Cadillac that rolled off a Michigan
assembly line just a few days ago. In a traditional sense,
Barra won’t be putting pencil to paper to render draw
ings of the next generation of GM cars. But she’s argu
ably doing something more difficult: If her company
is going to survive, she will have to design its future.
Barra has about 36,000 people reporting to her.
When she’s not at the company’s proving ground in
Milford, Michigan, she’s working from her office on
the 39th floor of the GM headquarters, in downtown
Detroit, or at GM’s sprawling technical center in War
ren, Michigan. Or she may be traveling to Brazil. Or to
China. Or to an assembly line somewhere in the U.S.,
so she can get a firsthand look at production—one of
her past jobs was running GM’s assembly plant in
Hamtramck, Michigan—and discuss problems and
ideas with line workers. “I used to say I’ve been to
every GM [assembly] plant in the world,” Barra tells
me when I meet with her in Detroit, in August, “but
there’s a new one in China now that I haven’t yet visited.”
She’s taken on the GM job—her official title is senior
vice president of global product development—at an
auspicious moment. After suffering through a tax
payerfinanced government bailout, GM has had a
winning streak of late: six successive profitable quar
ters, capped by a $2.5 billion earnings windfall this
past August. To a certain extent, these achievements
reflect GM’s newfound financial freedom. Debts and
responsibilities that had long burdened the company
were largely shucked off during the recent financial
restructuring. GM now has far fewer employees; far
fewer “underperforming assets,” such as idle plants;
and far more flexible labor agreements. Its costs are
now closer to those at its overseas competition. In
addition, GM’s car sales have been boosted—temporar
ily, most likely—by the earthquake that ravaged Japan
and stifled production at Toyota and Honda.
And yet, even with these improvements, GM will
clockwise from top: the 1963 corvette
sting ray; the 1912 classic six; the 1955
Bel air; the 1967 c/K Pickup; and the
1936 suburban carryall. Welburn’s other
chevy favorites include the 1932 deluxe
sport coupe, the 1948 pickup, and the
original 1953 corvette.
“these can’t
be cars where
people think
they’re settling,”
says barra.
almost certainly face an enormously difficult next decade. Barra told me the biggest risk to
GM is its “great, very formidable competitors.” But that’s only part of it. GM is under intense
pressure to change, and the burden of orchestrating that transition falls largely to Barra. Dan
Akerson, GM’s new CEO and Barra’s boss, has asked that she accelerate newvehicle develop
ment cycles—which at GM and elsewhere in the industry require between three and four years’
time—with the goal of reducing development and production costs by 25%. In effect, he’s ask
ing Barra to change one of the fundamental rules governing global auto production, to find a
way to apply a sort of Moore’s law to automaking and speed up the flexibility of the whole
enterprise. Equally daunting, Barra faces looming new mileage requirements from the federal
government, which will require drastically changing the design and engineering of future
cars. Putting these two challenges together, Barra must try to unravel some of the most vexing
puzzles in global manufacturing: How do you transition a worldwide system to a faster
