Forget Detroit's obsession with how GM's union workers may see their health care benefits cut -- and whether it might help the automaker for more than five minutes.
Ignore the carping about GM sticking it to its salaried workers, dumping contract workers and hammering suppliers -- as if all that ails GM can be fixed if they could just squeeze their people hard enough. GM's brass knows better.
Assuming GM is more than a benefit factory whose primary function is keeping employees and retirees in the manner to which they've become accustomed, the difference between hope and despair for a GM revival are the 20 new cars and trucks sitting under GM's design dome here in Warren.
If they miss and become the newest exhibits in the bloated gallery of GM products that didn't match their hype and can't outperform their aggressive rivals, it's all over.
Really, it is. The people who'll pay the price won't just be GM employees and retirees. It'll be communities like Detroit, Lansing and Pontiac, which depend on GM for jobs and tax revenue. It'll be homeowners across Michigan, whose housing values will get whacked. And it'll be industrial America.
Bottom line: There's much more riding on the next 30 months of GM product rollouts -- which GM is touting in a series of private previews
-- than product czar Bob Lutz's legacy or Chairman Rick Wagoner's job.
The good news is there's not a pathetic Pontiac Aztek anywhere among the shiny models parked under the dome. The new full-size SUVs, set to arrive early next year, are sleeker and more fuel-efficient than their predecessors and, in late 2007, should be available with gas-electric hybrid powertrains.
The trio of mid-sized crossover vehicles from Buick, GMC and Saturn, code-named Lambda, will be late to the hot crossover game -- which means they must be better than their rivals. If the Buick version is any indication, skeptics (like me) are in for a big surprise because this is no flabby Rendezvous.
Same for the next-generation Saturns. There's the Teutonic Aura, a mid-size sedan that drew raves at the Detroit auto show, a Euro-style roadster named Sky, a crossover dubbed "Outlook" and a successor to the compact Ion sedan. Any resemblance to today's plasticky Saturns is, thankfully, coincidental.
The all-new Cadillac CTS is likely to give BMW and Mercedes-Benz engineers heart palpitations, mostly because the planned interior is (like most of the other interiors planned for the coming slug of GM models) a vast improvement over the current model.
Add that to the performance-and-quality cred amassed by the new Cadillacs, and you can't help but feel cautiously encouraged about GM's ability to pull out of its depressing nosedive.
Here's hoping. Talking mid-contract deals with the union may be necessary in tough times, but they're hardly sufficient. Only more desirable metal meets that requirement, and it can't come soon enough.