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Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke met with the top management and union officials of the General Motors Corp.'s Broening Highway minivan plant yesterday morning to begin formulating a strategy to ward off a potential shutdown of the city's largest manufacturing plant.During a tour of the GM facility, the mayor said that he was "going to fight hard" to see that the plant, which employs about 3,700 workers, has a long future in Baltimore. The latest threat to the 56-year-old facility comes from the recently passed federal Clean Air Act.The minivan produced here is scheduled for a major overhaul for the 1996 model year, and GM plans to decide in 1993 where the new van will be made.

Investor Kirk Kerkorian's announcement of a tender offer for 28 million shares of General Motors' stock has caught the attention of retirement finance specialists. General Motors has promised tens of billions of dollars in pensions and retiree medical benefits to its work force - promises that are hurting its ability to compete. And while Kerkorian said Wednesday that his investment would be passive, his track record left many analysts skeptical. What designs might Kerkorian have on those retirement plans?

As he prepares to make his case for re-election, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. misses few opportunities to tout Maryland's economy, and yesterday's announcement that General Motors would expand its White Marsh plant to build gas-electric hybrid transmissions could have been a ready-made occasion to score political points. The Republican governor traded jabs with Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democrat he said has been working on GM issues "for a very long time, even longer than I have." "And I'll be here after you're gone," she hollered back.

It promises to be the industrial espionage case of the decade, one replete with big money, big egos, big stakes and big national interests.Germans watched aghast last Thursday as 60 police investigators swept through Wolfsburg, home of the huge Volkswagen auto empire and symbol of the postwar German economic "miracle." They marched into top executive offices and raided homes of several VW officials, possibly including the central figure in the case, a Spaniard named Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, vice president for all General Motors purchasing worldwide before he defected to Volkswagen last March.

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. had its worst U.S. sales month since 1975 last month as reduced access to loans and a weaker economy kept consumers off dealer lots. GM said its sales of cars and light trucks tumbled 45 percent from a year earlier. Ford Motor Co. saw a 30 percent decline, and Toyota Motor Corp. posted a 23 percent drop. Honda Motor Co. sales were down 25 percent, and Nissan Motor Co.'s slid 33 percent. "If you adjust for population growth, it's the worst sales month in the post-World War II era" for the industry, said Mike DiGiovanni, GM's chief sales analyst.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. said yesterday that it will unite its online car-buying Web site and onboard information services under a new unit to exploit the Internet and build revenue beyond car sales.Sun Microsystems Inc. will link and improve GM's Web sites for the new business, called e-GM, and develop a voice-activated Internet system. About 25 percent of U.S. auto revenue may eventually come from onboard services such as GM's OnStar rather than selling and fixing cars, said Sun Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy.

WITH Lee Mazzilli gone, there's another burning question lingering in the smoldering remnants of this once promising Orioles season. Who's got next? In the unemployment line, that is. Is it club executive vice president Jim Beattie? Is it vice president Mike Flanagan? How about both? And if they both are gone, then Sam Perlozzo is probably out the door, too. You have to expect a new general manager to choose his own manager. If not, that would be like naming a manager and refusing to let him pick his own coaches, and how crazy would that be?

THE CANADIAN Auto Workers union and General Motors Corp. reached an agreement last week on a three-year contact to settle a 20-day strike that had halted auto production in Canada and idled nearly 20,000 workers in the United States and Mexico.Who was the winner in the labor dispute? What did General Motors win? What did the union win? Will the contract help General Motors reduce its industry high production costs and become more competitive?Michael Flynn, Associate director,Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation,University of MichiganI don't think there was a clear winner.

Last month, General Motors Corp. announced yet another downsizing and reorganization of its ailing North American vehicle business and named a new chief financial officer. None of this will fix GM's systemic problems and arrest its long-term decline. In fact, by spreading "legacy" pension and health care costs for many thousands of retired workers over a smaller number of vehicles, downsizing North American operations brings GM closer to bankruptcy. Indeed, the company's stock price fell last week to a 23-year low as Toyota announced plans to boost production - a move that could set the stage for that company to replace GM as the world's largest automaker.

General Motors Corp. said yesterday that it would sell most of its stake in Japanese automaker Suzuki Motor Corp. to raise $2 billion in cash while it accelerates efforts to reduce its U.S. hourly work force through buyouts. GM is in talks with the United Auto Workers about offering thousands of workers early retirement to reduce the ranks of its hourly workers from about 105,000 in the United States. At the same time, GM is negotiating with Delphi Corp. to take back some workers from the bankrupt supplier, which GM spun off in 1999, and avert a costly strike.