After a night spent signing mounds of paperwork
authorizing the transfer of cash, real estate, technology and other
property, GM attorneys are expected to officially usher the new
General Motors out of bankruptcy protection on Friday and onto a
path toward a hopefully profitable future.

Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, the
troubled company is expected to emerge cleansed of massive debt and
burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans.
Spurred on by the Obama administration's support, the process took
just 40 days, even slightly quicker than crosstown rival Chrysler
Group LLC's 42-day timeframe.

On Thursday, a bankruptcy court order allowing GM to sell most
of its assets to a new company went into effect. The new GM, 61
percent owned by the U.S. government, will face a brutally
competitive global automotive market in the middle of the worst
sales slump in a quarter-century.

At a 9 a.m. press conference Friday, CEO Fritz Henderson will
announce that GM will cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs,
including 450 top executives. The company still employs 88,000
people in the U.S. and 235,000 worldwide.

Henderson also is expected to describe how GM will streamline
its bureaucratic management structure to become profitable again.
GM has said it will be able to make money even if the U.S. auto
market stays at a depressed level of 10 million to 10.5 million
vehicles sold.

Yet despite massive cost reductions, experts say GM must produce
vehicles that people want to buy, and change its image to one on
the cutting edge of efficiency and quality.

"It is the smaller, leaner, tougher, better cost-focused GM,"
said George Magliano, an automotive analyst with the consulting
firm IHS Global Insight. "But they still have to deal with the
problems that they faced longer-term."

Rep. Gary Peters, whose Michigan district is home to three GM
factories, said the company's emergence signals a new era for the
domestic auto industry and the thousands of people it employs.

"With bankruptcy in the rearview mirror, U.S. auto companies
will even more aggressively pursue new technologies, become more
globally competitive," he said. "Decades from now, our nation
will be glad we did not let a global credit crisis put an end to
the American automobile."

"I'm very much looking forward to a point where we're operating
in clear air, and the name of the company not being associated with
bankruptcy and loans and these things," said Mark LaNeve, GM's
North American marketing chief.

GM ranked as the top global automaker in terms of sales for 77
years before Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. snatched its crown in 2008.
The company sold nearly 8.4 million cars and trucks around the
world in 2008, falling short of Toyota's nearly 9 million.

Once the largest corporation in America, GM held the top spot in
the Fortune 500 ranking for 20 years before being pushed out of the
top spot in 1973 by Exxon Mobil Corp. It reclaimed No. 1 status in
1985 and held it for another 15 years.

Experts say GM's future success will depend largely on its
ability to persuade consumers that it's a different company, one
that builds cars that will equal or outlast Japanese models. To
illustrate the change, GM is considering a new name.

Turning a profit will not be easy. GM lost more than $80 billion
in the last four years and survives only because it expects to
receive $50 billion in U.S. government loans. Without the loans,
its executives have said the company would have been sold off in
pieces.

The Obama administration has said it does not plan to interfere
with day-to-day operations, though it ousted ex-CEO Rick Wagoner
and has been involved in picking the new company's board.

Most of GM's model lineup is expected to stay unchanged for now.
But the company on Friday will probably show off its newer, more
efficient models, as well as plans for a U.S.-made subcompact and
rechargeable electric vehicles.

Also on Friday, Henderson is expected to announce that Bob Lutz,
GM's product guru, will remain as a special adviser. Lutz, 77,
announced in February that he would retire at year's end.

In addition to the U.S. government's controlling interest, the
United Auto Workers union gets a 17.5 percent stake of the company
through its retiree health care trust, and the Canadian government
will control 11.7 percent. The remaining shares went to bondholders
of the old company.

The parts of GM not moving to the new company will become part
of "old GM," a collection of assets and liabilities that will be
sold to pay creditors.

Almost immediately, GM will try to show how it's a different
company, perhaps by changing its familiar square logo from blue to
green, to reflect its environmental focus.

"I think that as a corporate identity the color change could
well be a smart move," said Tony Spaeth, president of Tony
Spaeth/Identity, a Rye, N.Y., firm that helps companies craft
identities. "It lends a little bit more reality and sincerity of
intention to 'We want to change the way we do things."'

Today's consumers are sophisticated and will seek out
environmental information to help make shopping choices, said Allen
Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates.

"They have to do this just to stay in the game and to win on
that dimension. To win on green, this is a very big challenge," he
said.

Toyota, for instance, is known for its breakthrough hybrid
gas-electric technology, and GM could accomplish the same thing
with its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car due in showrooms
by late 2010.