(FORTUNE Magazine) – Why are you back in the driver's seat?

When times are tough, if you shorten up the lines of communication, you move much faster. I can get a little more texture and feedback and a little finer definition of the issues--like what's going on in the market, what's working with new products, what is the tone of challenging topics like the UAW.

Since you already have a job, why didn't you pick somebody else?

First, I know the business and the people very well. Second, I've been pretty close to the issues over the last several years. Third, I've talked to people on the outside, retired CEOs and board members, and it is clear that when a company is in a difficult situation, the CEO is going to spend his time on those issues anyway.

So what are your plans?

In my mind the strategy is crystal clear. The first thing is, are we doing everything we need [to make great cars and trucks]? Do we have the right prioritization on those products that drive the most volume and the most profit? Then, as we look out to the horizon, do we have the products well aligned with our brand and distribution strategy, and are they going into market segments where we see growth?

Are GM's problems self-inflicted?

Clearly we haven't made every call right. Certain product categories we obviously could have played better. If you said, "Gee, should we have played the hybrid thing differently?"--with hindsight, we didn't play that perfectly.

Why are you putting all the emphasis on big SUVs when gas prices are so high?

You don't have the benefit of seeing all the data I do. If you look at fuel economy as a positive or negative reason for the purchase of large SUVs, it is like eight on a list of ten factors. It would have been the height of stupidity, having spent a lot of money on products that [tested] off the charts, to say "Oh, we're not going to do those." Anybody who sees the data says that's crazy.

UAW members get better health benefits than President Bush. Why not just tell them that's not acceptable anymore?

We think we can make more progress if we sit down and work it out together, and that's what we've been doing over the last seven or eight years. If it doesn't work, we'll take another fork in the road, but we won't do it prematurely.

Can you do anything before the UAW contract expires in 2007?

If we are disadvantaged by our toughest global competitor [Toyota] to the tune of $4 billion a year in health care, I'm not sure it helps us to [delay negotiations and] make it four billion times three rather than four billion times one. Time is money here.

Is your goal at GM to "sustain the enterprise"?

Nobody wants to be the guy who runs GM when it goes out of business. Does that diminish responsibility to shareholders? Absolutely not. We've got to get all aspects of the business competitive. Some are going to take more creativity and work, but we're resolved to get it done.