The latest instalment of the ongoing saga “There’s Little Respect and Less Love for GM” comes in two parts:

First, a product update focused on the highly affordable 2016 Chevrolet Cruze compact car:

The thriftiest version of the 2016 Chevrolet Cruze gets 5.6 litres/100 km on the highway – which lands it in gasoline-electric hybrid fuel efficiency territory. It comes with 4G LTE WiFi and is compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, so it’s a modern car inside, too.

The Cruze is Canada’s fourth best-selling car, with sales up 13.1 per cent this year, While that may sound impressive, Honda sells about 2.5 times as many Civics, Hyundai sells more than twice the number of Elantras and Toyota sells about 60 per cent more Corollas.

The latest version of the Cruze may have sleeker styling, 10 standard airbags and all sorts of crash-avoidance technologies on the offer, yet Chevy’s best-selling car is not nearly as popular with Canadians as perennially popular imports.

GM CEO Mary Barra (left) with GM product czar Mark Reuss (right): profits driven largely by SUV and pickup sales in North America.

The Cruze is without question a good and competitive compact car and certainly worth at least a test drive if you’re shopping for this sort of ride. General Motors the company, meanwhile, has emerged as a perfectly competitive global car company, yet like the Cruze in Canada, it struggles to find love.

That is, GM just reported that first-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago. By any objective measure, GM had a winning first quarter: pre-tax operating income rose 28 per cent, to $2.66 billion (all figures in U.S. dollars). Net income more than doubled to $1.95 billion. Revenue rose 4.0 per cent to $37.27 billion. Analysts’ estimates: $35.71 billion. Even GM’s European operations came in near break-even – something of a small miracle, by historical standards.

“We’re growing where it counts, gaining retail share in the U.S., outpacing the industry in Europe and capitalizing on robust growth in SUV and luxury segments in China,” CEO Mary Barra said in a statement.

And the financial markets let out a resounding yawn. GM shares as of this writing were up less than 2.0 per cent (to $32.80).

GM has a price-to-earnings ratio of 5.464 – astounding, really, for an immensely profitable company. Some might think investors would be flocking to GM, if for no other reason than the dividend yield of 4.74 per cent (versus the 2.46 average yield of all consumer goods companies, according to Dividend.com).

But no. GM at this writing is trading below its 52-week high and year-to-date shares actually are down 3.56 per cent. As Globe Investor notes, GM shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by 11.89 per cent during the last year. GM’s market cap: $50.66 billion. Compare that to unprofitable Tesla’s $33.56 billion cap.

The story here, then, is that car buyers and investors as a group remain sceptical about GM’s products and the company. GM’s most mainstream product, the Cruze, looks like a very competitive automobile, yet many, many shoppers remain profoundly unwilling to forgive GM for its many sins of the past. The Cobalt comes to mind here.

Investors on the whole continue to take a dim view of GM. They are not ready to believe that GM in 2016 is a profoundly different company than the one that went bankrupt and was bailed out in 2009.

If you are an open-minded car buyer, however, take note that many GM products are worth a look – and they’re being offered with generous discounts.

If you’re an investor, the worry is that GM remains at heart the same sclerotic company it was for many decades leading up to 2009. GM, the reasoning goes, will be exposed as a fraud once the cyclical auto industry heads into a sales trough.

But what if GM really is a changed company? Then many of its products are bargains and the stock is a steal.