With the roar of a Camaro engine, shares of the new General Motors Corp. began trading on Wall Street last month in a move that allowed the federal government to sell down its stake in the automaker and perhaps opened the door to extracting the government from the company altogether next year.

Sales in November for GM rose 21 percent over the same month last year, and GM just posted its third consecutive profitable quarter. The company is on track to have its first annual profit in six years.

So is GM back?

We'd have to say yes — thanks to a speedy trip through bankruptcy court.

But even so, this is still GM. As auto expert Paul Ingrassia put it so well in The Wall Street Journal recently, "Detroit's downfall in the past has been to confuse temporary comebacks with victory, and then to lapse back into arrogance and complacency."

That arrogance and complacency led to a bloated company with too many brands, too many factories, too many workers and fat union contracts. When the crisis came in the fall of 2008, GM wasn't in shape to weather it. Ford Motor Co., on the other hand, didn't need a taxpayer bailout. The reason: CEO Alan Mulally took over in 2006 and immediately began doing to Ford what only bankruptcy court could do to GM. Mulally cut Ford's North American workforce by 40 percent and sold subsidiaries. The company cut older models, redesigned others and killed off the Mercury line. Now, Ford has a reputation for quality that GM can only dream of.

GM is placing a big bet on its Chevy Volt, which will run mostly on electricity. We're all in favor of green cars, but even with a $7,500 government tax credit, the price tag will be north of $30,000. Pricey for a Chevy. And despite cutbacks, union contracts in Detroit are still pretty fat.

In short, GM has its work cut out for it.

We didn't favor the government bailout, reasoning that GM and Chrysler would learn the wrong lessons, which would lead to more problems down the road. Clearly, the bailout saved jobs — hundreds of thousands of jobs. And clearly, GM is on the mend for now. The government is even getting back some of the $49.5 billion it gave to GM in the bailout. The U.S. Department of the Treasury said Thursday that it had received another $1.8 billion in additional net proceeds from GM's initial public offering; the government has received $13.5 billion in all.

But has GM learned how to produce high-quality, affordable cars made in the United States that Americans want to buy? Has it learned to rein in costs? Time will tell.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.