GM Continues Its Efforts to Polish Image

General Motors continued its public relations offensive Friday when GM Chairman Roger B. Smith hosted Wall Street analysts on a tour of the Linden, N.J., assembly plant, which has just been remodeled to produce the new Chevrolet Corsica and Beretta, key mid-size models for GM.

Smith used the meeting as the latest forum for the company’s ongoing drive to improve its public image, which has been badly tattered during the past year by the controversial ouster of GM director H. Ross Perot, the $700-million buyout of his stock and the slide in GM profits and car sales.

Smith, who has toured the country all year in an effort to reassure institutional investors, industry analysts and the media that GM is on its way to prosperity, told the analysts that GM’s first-quarter earnings should exceed Wall Street estimates, which range between $1.50 and $2.50 per share (or between $476.4 million and $794 million).

Actively Traded

Smith also indicated that GM may be forced to cut car production to boost its profits. Maximizing profits will now be “the principal bellwether of our performance,” rather than market share or sales, Smith said.

GM was the third most-active stock Friday in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It closed at a 52-week high of $86, up $2.75 a share.

“Maximum profitability may be best achieved at less production capacity than we currently have,” Smith said. “That simply means a leaner, more productive work force operating in fewer, but more modern, manufacturing facilities.”

Smith also repeated GM’s earlier prediction that it will be able to provide shareholders with a 15% return on investment by 1990.