It should be noted that the front-page teaser picture for this article is of one of the more excellent things GM has done in the past decade, namely sponsoring Robbie Gordon in a "Hummer" in the Dakar rally.
If you're not familiar with the Dakar, imagine 14 days of the Baja 500 through the Sahara (or in this case South America) with no GPS navigation allowed. Men in ridiculously powerful machines doing some ridiculously amazing driving in just about the harshest conditions imagineable.
It's true that Robbie Gordon's "Hummer" (Basically a completely custom tube-welded trophy truck) has almost nothing in common with a vehicle you could buy from a GM delership, but I like the principle of American car companies sponsoring a race that requires innovation. For too long the only racing they've sponsored has been NASCAR, where they still - for god's sake - use carbourators.
Racing events like F1 and the Dakar are won or lost on innovation and quality. Technologies that BMW engineers develop in this year's F1 season will probably trickle down to the M series in a year or two, and in the 3-series a couple years after that, and perhaps into American made cars a few years after that. If American companies want to compete, they're going to have to innovate. And winning races like the Dakar demands innovation.
I may never need to jump my Suburban off a Patagonian sand dune, but it would be nice if some of what GM's engineers learned designing Gordon's Dakar truck trickeled down into, say, keeping my Suburban from failing every time it hits a pothole.
