General Motors Company (NYSE: GM, TSX: GMM.U), commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated (until 2009) as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's largest automaker, by vehicle unit sales, in 2011.

GM employs 202,000 people and does business in some 157 countries. General Motors produces cars and trucks in 31 countries, and sells and services these vehicles through the following divisions/brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden, as well as two joint ventures in China, Shanghai GM and SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile. GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety, security and information services.

The late-2000s financial crisis and late-2000s recession exacerbated GM's pre-existing financial and corporate culture problems and pushed the corporation into a period of crisis. Two successive U.S. presidential administrations wrestled with the question of what role the U.S. government should or should not play in emergent intervention in the automotive industry, most especially at GM. In December 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush agreed to a $13.4 billion bailout for General Motors; within months, an additional $39 billion was added by the Barack Obama administration. Both presidents have stated that despite counterarguments presented to them in which the creative destruction of capitalism should be allowed to run its course, they chose intervention for GM in order to prevent collapse of the North American segment of the automotive industry and the economic sequelae that it was expected to have throughout the supply chain, such as huge job losses, credit market freezing, and loss of industrial base. GM emerged from a Chapter 11 reorganization in 2009, with an initial public offering that was one of the world's top 5 largest IPOs to date. GM has returned to profitability, even posting a record annual profit in 2011, although its economic impact and surroundings are different from those in the era when GM was by various measures the largest corporation on earth.