DETROIT, (Reuters) – A new General Motors emerged  from bankruptcy protection yesterday — far more quickly than  most industry watchers had expected — as a leaner automaker  pledging to win back American consumers and pay back  taxpayers.

A whirlwind 40-day bankruptcy for GM concluded with the  closing of a deal that sold key operations to a new company  majority-owned by the U.S. Treasury.

The development, which follows a similar fast-track  reorganization of Chrysler, represented a victory for the Obama  administration and its commitment to save jobs and prevent a  liquidation of the largest U.S. automaker.

At the same time, the U.S. government has taken on  substantial new risks as a 60 percent owner of the new GM with  a $50 billion equity investment and $10 billion in debt and  perpetual preferred shares.

Analysts said the government intervention had given GM a  new chance and sharply lower operating costs, but left  management facing deep challenges given the weak economy and  GM’s long-running slide in market share.

“I wouldn’t really call it a new GM, it is just a smaller  GM. That would be more of an apt description. They still have a  lot of hurdles to jump,” said Mirko Mikelic, portfolio manager  at Fifth Third Bank. “Right now, they are in a survival mode.”

Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said the new company would  shed layers of management, make decisions faster and shed the  bureaucracy that critics say contributed to the failure of the  100-year-old automaker.