Mary Barra got her first taste of what ailed General Motors in 1980, when she was an 18-year-old college student To help pay tuition she was working at a GM plant in Pontiac, Mich. Her job: inspect the fit of hood and fender panels on Pontiac Grand Prix cars coming off the assembly line. She saw enough flaws, plenty of them, that today she says bluntly, "It was not a good time for GM quality" Barra took a job with the company and stayed for the next 26 years, distinguishing herself in manufacturing while doing short stints in human resources and public relations. In February she was picked out of relative obscurity for clearly the most crucial job at GM these days: to bring new vehicles to market faster and to attack GM's stubborn bureaucracy—the very bureaucracy she worked her way through.
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