More broadly, the move should serve two purposes for GM CEO Dan Akerson and a marketing brain trust that has been amorphously structured since the infamous departure of Joel Ewanick as global CMO last spring.

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The disruptions obviously were aimed at setting things right in the longer term, but GM CEO Dan Akerson cut short any chance that Ewanick had to see the promised payoffs from many of his major initiatives.

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Now, however at least in the view of the guy who ran the company before current CEO Dan Akerson Volt seems to have been been reduced to sort of teachable moment, an asterisk-bearing curiosity in the long arc of GM products.

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