You are entitled to your own opinion, but I too am speaking from a point of exprience (my family has been driving GM cars and trucks since 1960, before that Chryslers and Plymouths only). Every single one of our GM cars and trucks have ran just as well as any of our Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans and Volkswagens that have sprinkled my family's automotive history, immediate family or not.
Thusly, I look at it as a combination of my own expririence, and expiriences of others as posted in automotive resports such as those that come from JD Power and Consumer Reports. Obviously, for the most part, Japanese automakers generally rank higher than the bread-and-butter American automotive brands. But when GM carries the number two and three spot respectively (Buick and Cadillac, behind Lexus) those are solid numbers that prove that their cars are more relyable than some of their foreign competition.
You seem to mention starting issues and overheating problems quite often, care to detail what cars and trucks that is happening with? Our Astros had several problems with overheating, but that was because of bad thermostats on the 4.3L V6, a common problem from what I understand with those. Generally speaking however, they didn't go out untill almost 100,000 miles each time, and considering how cheap and easy it is to replace a thermostat, its not a big deal. VIPERGTSR01 often points out that the old 3.8L V6 also had some overheating problems when they were used down in Australia, but to my knowlege, that has been a rare occourance here with my family's Pontiacs and Buicks.
As for the starting issues, I can't explain that one. GM products generally have fewer starting issues than most Ford or DCX vehicles (DCX have always had poor starters on their Chrysler vehicles). Either the driver had a low battery and was attempting to crank the engine too long, or they may have had a faulty starter. Again, none (and I mean absolutely NONE) of our GM vehicles have had that problem, so I'm not sure what the case was there.
But overall, I would suggest that you not make overgeneralizations of GM products based on a few Chevy Celebrites that came into Pep Boys. Toyota and Honda have both been in a prodcut quality free-fall of which I belive comes from their increased production levels and the demand to create all-new products far more often. Hell, even Hyundai is about ready to enter the top-five marques for top relyability, and combine that with their obsurdly good warranty, and you will be buying a car that souldn't ever give you a problem.
GM might not be able to fix their situation with every young pupil out there today, but they have done enough to bring interest back to the brand. Cars like the Cobalt SS, G6 Convertable, Solstice, Sky, Camaro, GTO, Corvette, STS, CTS, etc have all brought attention back to GM as they have begun their turnaround (slowly) twards where they need to be to become a profitable company once again. GM has allready said they don't care if they aren't the world's largest automaker, they care about making products people want to buy, and they want to be able to satisfy their fanbase allready.
I'm happy to debate this with you, as this is an issue that GM will have to tackle in making a decision for or against a merger with Nissan-Renault. Nissan-Renault themselves aren't particularly well-known for their reliability or build quality (argueably worse than the majority of GM products), but it would be interesting to see what could come of that in the future, should the merger go through.
) don't have to worry about the backdoor violation Daimler-Benz pulled on Chrysler. I liked the part where he started telling that "instead of closing GM plants...." story to smokescreen massive cutbacks he has planned. 
