I'm somewhat less optimistic. But experience with their products since the 1970s, long before the company went on the taxpayer dole, has been a good teacher.

I once owned a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, whose headlights simply fell out of the sockets after just two months. Pontiacs - including mine - predictably blew out their timing chains between 50,000 and 60,000 miles. And the motorized roof on our convertible Cadillac DeVille often behaved in the manner of an Abbott and Costello routine.

But now that the company will be 60 percent owned by the taxpayer (read: we foot the bill, but the White House and their support groups run the company), somehow I doubt that the $50 billon that has already been earmarked for the company's recovery will end there.

Just call me a pessimist.

I simply can't see how, under this current structure, the company can even hope to return to profitability instead of wallowing like a taxpayer-funded hulk. And trust me, it's going to continue to exist only though a nationwide intravenous tube of ongoing bailout monies.

Couple that with the cap-and-trade tax legislation that seems destined to pass through Congress, and you can bet that will drastically curtail auto manufacturers producing anything larger or more stylish than a Yugo. If only for fear of amassing costly environmental penalties.

Don't be too surprised either if gas prices start spiking to levels previously reserved for a carton of cigarettes.

Lately I've read various opinion columns where those opposing bailouts of GM and Chrysler fear that American consumers (who technically own the majority of GM) will flock across the border to Mexico or Canada to purchase larger vehicles in lieu of the formless and compacted hybrids that promise to emerge under this current set-up.

I don't know if it would necessarily go that far but I do envision quantum changes over the next couple of years and not many of them good.

And of course, guess who gets to pick up the check?