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DETROIT — General Motors Corp. completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy.

At a news conference, CEO Fritz Henderson said the revamped automaker will be faster and more responsive to customers than the old one. It will generate cash and repay billions in government loans ahead of a 2015 deadline.

The new company will build more cars and trucks that consumers want and launch them faster than in the past, Henderson said. GM also announced plans to experiment with auctioning new cars on eBay, expanding on an existing partnership covering certified used vehicles.

"We recognize that we’ve been given a rare second chance at GM, and we are very grateful for that. And we appreciate the fact that we now have the tools to get the job done," he said.

The new company will focus on customers, cars and culture.

"If we don’t get this right, nothing else is going to work," Henderson said at GM’s Downtown Detroit headquarters. "Business as usual is over at General Motors."

GM, in a viability plan presented to the government, said it would break even before interest and taxes next year, and be slightly above break-even for 2011 on a pretax basis.

"Sitting here today, I don’t have any reason to disbelieve those numbers," Henderson said, giving no details of when the company would make a net profit business cards online.

Henderson said the U.S. government, which owns a majority stake in GM, has vowed that it would not get involved in day-to-day decisions. GM received $19 billion to $20 billion more in federal aid on Friday, the remainder of the $50 billion in aid it will receive, he said. A large part of the money will be held in escrow.

The Treasury Department released a statement Friday crediting GM’s restructuring with saving both the automaker and "tens of thousands" of jobs.

GM makes the GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express full-size vans at its Wentzville facility. A week after GM filed for bankruptcy, it told the local work force that it would cut one of two production shifts on Aug. 10.

One shift of workers will return to work on Monday, after a nearly five-week extended shutdown. A week later, on Aug. 3, workers on both production shifts will come back to transition the plant, said Bob Wheeler, the plant communications manager. By Aug. 10, about 890 hourly workers will be laid off.

A side effect of GM’s reorganization is that about 1,100 dealerships are expected to lose their franchises.

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