For more than four years, General Motors (GM) struggled to shed the loser image of a corporation that needed a $50 billion taxpayer bailout in 2009 to survive a self-inflicted near-death experience. Now, in the wake of a February recall of 1.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts and other discontinued models, GM's much-derided status as "Government Motors" has unlikely appeal. Company lawyers are counting on its 2009 bankruptcy arrangements as a bulwark against litigation that grows more ominous by the day following GM's admission that it knew of faulty ignition switches more than a decade ago and failed to fix the problem. None of the defective GM models are in production anymore, so the universe of ignition-related fatalities should be limited. Mary Barra, who became GM's CEO on Jan 15, has said that while she is personally sorry, she didn't know the details of the ignition problem until Jan 31. If that's true, it's truly scary.