According to a recent article in the Detroit News, the restructuring, streamlining, and overall house cleaning at GM are far from over as the automaker plans to cut their number of vehicle platforms in half, down to a total of 14 platforms, by the year 2018. The move is part of a larger plan to boost profitability of the company overall that will reduce overhead and allow them to build more global vehicles instead of a large number country-by-country models.

Mary Barra, GM’s product chief was quoted as saying , “That will help get products to the market faster, and reduce duplicate engineering and design for cars sold across the globe.”

While the company is still owned by the U.S. taxpayers, which many still refer to as “Government Motors,” it’s on far better footing now that it was in the past couple of years.  It exceeded Wall Street expectations when it reported a $2.5 billion second-quarter profit, and even more impressive was that it was its sixth consecutive quarter in the black since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009. However, the current financial crisis has not put anyone in a comfortable position, and GM no exception.

Future GM plans include the manufacture of Cadillacs in China, more emphasis on Chevy (which accounts for 61 of GM sales), and hopes to take the Opel brand upscale to compete with VW in the European market.