not just on her but on her team. She is fortunate
that her predecessor, Bob Lutz, the former GM
vice chairman, prepared the way, in part by giving
designers more leeway to experiment (the result
was a string of successes such as the Chevy Cruze
and Chevy Volt) while also pushing managers
to pay attention to small but crucial details. (“Bob
Lutz had the ability to actually look at something
and say, “It’s dumb, or ugly, or cheap,” says Mary
ann Keller, a veteran auto analyst.) Barra—who
worked under Lutz and still speaks regularly to
him—points out that the foundation Lutz installed
is still in place. For instance, under Barra, the
head of GM’s design team, Ed Welburn, remains
the point person for all models around the globe.
Barra’s Detroit office is an expansive suite
located in the hushed inner sanctum that houses
the carmaker’s most elite executives. Her win
dows offer a panoramic view of downtown. But
personally she is open and unpretentious—a
Michigan native and hockey mom who seems
as game to talk about her two kids as she is about
powertrain engineering. On the wall behind her
desk hangs an enormous photograph of a Cadil
lac CTS Coupe, a stylish model from a few years
back that promised to rejuvenate the brand as
long as the company could figure out how to
manufacture the swooping sheet metal panel in
back. It was Barra’s team that found the solution.
Technology, she knows, will be critical to
GM’s future. Already, Barra says, computeraided
modeling, as well as 3D prototyping and print
ing, are helping to speed the time it takes for a
car to go from design to showroom. Technology
will be even more essential in tackling the fuel
efficiency problem. Currently, carmakers must
achieve an average of 27. 5 miles per gallon with
their fleets; by 2025, federal laws mandate, the
average will need to hit 54. 5 mpg. Some of the
gap will be bridged by smaller models like Sonic
and Spark. But even there, Sonic’s highway rat
ings for miles per gallon will likely fall only in
the mid40s, for instance. The Volt—an electric
vehicle with a small engine to extend battery
range—offers a more radical model. Other ve
hicles will rely on what GM is calling “eassist”:
an increasingly popular “startstop” technology
that turns off your car engine momentarily at,
say, a traffic light and thus conserves fuel. These
vehicles also have the capacity for regenerative
braking, a technology that captures the energy
from the brakes and uses it to boost mileage.
But the grand quest for Barra at the moment
is something alternately called “lightweighting”
and “mass reduction.” These are efforts within
GM to design and build cars that are significantly
lighter. One imagines the design team at GM
slicing heavy chunks off the clay models they
build as prototypes—let’s just make the damn
thing shorter . That’s not how it works. “It’s not
kilograms,” Barra says. “We’re looking for
grams.” Her group is trying to whittle and shave
mass off multiple car parts—often by substitut
ing lighter, composite materials (such as carbon
fiber or special metal alloys) in place of the usual
steel and aluminum. The hope is that, with a
thousand small cuts, they can maintain perfor
mance and safety, yet still reach a threshold that
allows a magnifying impact—that is, if these
slight reductions in weight can at some point
permit the use of significantly different funda
mental components. Thus, a vehicle of slightly
less mass might allow for a smaller power train—
the group of components, including the engine
and transmission, that delivers the automobile’s
power. That would lead to an enormous reduc
tion in mass, and therefore a large gain in fuel
efficiency. Other, much lighter core components
could in turn follow. “Smaller mass,” Barra points
out, “smaller brakes.” It’s a clear example of how
a bevy of small and painstaking decisions under
Barra’s watch, if done properly, might add up to
one very large leap forward.
Barra and gM are not alone in trying to create
global architectures, or in trying to reduce car
mass in pursuit of fuel efficiency. Even new
manufacturers in China are moving rapidly in
a similar direction, Barra points out, with bold
plans to gain international market share. Which
means that along with all those systemic changes
Barra has to manage, she also has to make sure
GM’s vehicles are attractive, compelling, lust
worthy consumer products.
Despite Toyota’s ascendancy, GM is still the
world’s biggest automaker. Yet in the U.S. at least,
it is not regarded as the best. Many at GM—Barra
among them—describe this as a perception gap,
a legacy from years ago that has been unfairly
reinforced by bitterness over the “Government
Motors” bailout that saved the company. Barra’s
father was a diemaker for Pontiac for 39 years.
She began working the GM assembly line as a
qualitycontrol employee when she was 18 years
old and has worked at GM ever since. For her,
eliminating the perception gap is not only a pro
fessional obligation. It’s a personal thing as well.
