I wonder if it would have made a difference for GM to have pursued more moonshots in automobiles and transportation in general over the last 50-60 years instead of just operational & profit/cost efficiencies and incremental product improvements.
In addition GM did a very poor job at improving the things you mention, especially product improvements. Toyota took a look at what GM was doing and trying to do, and then went and executed that vision with a very high level of excellence and urgency that GM was slow to respond to.
I do think GM now makes a viable (and in some cases excellent) product. It just took them a very long time to get back to that mentality that they had in the 20s-50s.
See also my other comment below.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World's_Fair... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cRoaPLvQx0 3. https://hbr.org/2014/08/do-your-companys-incentives-reward-b... (link not working for me when I posted it.)
GM DID pursue some moonshots - see below.
In my opinion GM's great downfall was not pursuing continuous improvement. Top management had the belief that GM was the market leader and thus people would buy cars from the market leader. This led to all sorts of bad decisions in the service of running high-volume low quality vehicles.
V-8-6-4 L62 Engine (variable cylinder usage): It ran rough and didn't work very well - Later efforts worked much better and go under the name Active Fuel Management
EV1: some people loved it; it may have been before it's time
Quadrasteer: All 4 wheels can turn. People who bought this option loved it; not enough people bought it.