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A conversation with GM's Mark Reuss on MPG, aluminum and Corvettes

There was plenty to talk about when General Motors hosted its annual mid-December holiday media reception a few months ago. GM had just decided to pull its global Chevrolet brand out of major European markets, where Chevys have competed directly with GM Europe Opel and Vauxhall vehicles, and the US government had sold its last remaining shares of GM stock. But most important was the company's just-reshuffled leadership. Post-bankruptcy CEO Dan Akerson had announced that he would step aside and that 52-year-old Mary Barra would replace him on January 15. Not only would she be the first woman to lead a major automaker, she would also be GM's first engineer CEO since Bob Stempel in the early 1990s. "I look at 2013 and 2014, as the retooling of General Motors" - Mark Reuss Replacing her as executive VP for global product development (and purchasing and supply chain) would be 49-year-old Mark Reuss, who had served a stellar four years as North American president, and elevated to corporate president (from executive VP and CFO) would be 42-year-old Dan Amman. All three are relatively young auto enthusiasts who are liked and respected inside and outside the company, and their collective talents and experience are highly complementary. I've interviewed Barra and found her smart, personable and knowledgeable, though she carefully walks the corporate line in speaking and answering questions. I met and chatted with Ammann for the first time at that holiday reception, and he made a good first impression. But I've known Reuss for some time as a genuinely good guy and a highly capable and inspiring leader, and I believe he is exactly the right person for the global product responsibility once famously held by the outspoken, oft-controversial Bob Lutz. So I jumped at an opportunity to join a group interview of Reuss (with mostly business reporters) at the Detroit Auto Show in January. It was an interesting session of mostly good questions, which he answered with refreshing candor and humor. "I look at 2013 and 2014, as the retooling of General Motors," Reuss said. "We've taken down almost every plant in North America, converted and turned it this last year, and to do that with award-winning vehicles and pretty flawless launches is key. We have to keep the train rolling on great product, because the rest won't happen without the best product, period." A reporter asked whether GM was pushing big trucks, SUVs and Corvettes again because gas is cheap. "No," Reuss said.

Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

More than 5,500 people tried to get the 2016 Chevy COPO Camaro

It's stating the obvious, but the 2016 Chevy COPO Camaro is popular with enthusiasts. So much so, it's attracted more than 5,500 hand raisers, General Motors said Tuesday at an event to show off the company's new Performance and Racing Center in Pontiac, MI. Unfortunately for drag racing fans, Chevy will only sell 69 of them, as it has for the last four years. The COPO Camaro can be configured for the NHRA Stock and Super Stock classes. It comes with racing-tuned chassis pieces and a solid rear axle. Power choices include 5.7-, 6.2- and 7.0-liter V8 engines. About half of COPO Camaro owners race their cars, and the rest keep them as collectibles. Jim Campbell, GM vice president of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, wouldn't say if the COPO is a profitable venture, but noted the fire-breathing dragster raises the image of Chevy and Camaro. "It makes sense for our business from a number of perspectives," he said. The first COPO Camaro, a Courtney Force-styled racecar that was revealed in November at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, hammered for $300,000 at the Barrett-Jackson auction last month. The proceeds went to the United Way. Campbell said low COPO production keeps interest high. Enthusiasts can also build their own COPOs by buying a rolling chassis and a crate motor, though those are not viewed by collectors in the same manner as GM factory-built creations. The COPO Camaro's V8 is one of several competition engines designed, built, and validated at the GM Performance and Racing Center. The Corvette C7R's 5.5-liter V8 and the Cadillac ATSV.R's 3.6-liter twin-turbo V6 are two more. Chevy calibrates and conducts dynamometer testing on its 2.2-liter V6 for IndyCar and performs design work on its NASCAR V8 at the facility, which existed previously at another location in Michigan. Related Video: