The bailout was never needed.
If the government had not intervened, GM would have reorganized in a traditional court supervised bankruptcy and continued operations just as almost every major US airline has been reorganized over the past 20 years. The major differences between a traditional bankruptcy, and the US government bailout:
1). No taxpayer dollars involved and no US government ownership
2). No union ownership
3). For the company to survive the union contracts would have been rewritten with much bigger union concessions.
4). The salaried and union retirees would have received equal treatment with respect to disposition of pension plans. In the government bankruptcy the union employee pensions were protected and the salaried employees took a reduction.
5). The Volt, and other uneconomical green ventures, would have been cancelled.
6). Bond holder rights would have been protected.
7). The arbitrary cancellation of dealer franchises would either not have occurred or would not have been a political action.
8). Possibly one or more of the discontinued brands would have survived in some form. The product strategy might be very different today.
9). Senior management would likely be different as the government would not have been involved in the selection.
10). The supplier base would have absorbed a larger financial loss. Government GM made good on payments to suppliers. In a normal bankruptcy the suppliers would have lost their receivables at the time of the filing, likely receiving only pennies on the dollar months or years layer.