TEXT OF STORY

SCOTT JAGOW: General Motors is certainly doing better with its bottom line. This morning, the carmaker said it made money for the second straight quarter, $62 million profit. But GM made 10 times more than that the same quarter last year. The difference is what happened at GMAC, the finance division. It got whacked by bad mortgages. More now from Ashley Milne-Tyte.

ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE: GM only owns 49 percent of GMAC these days and it’s probably relieved.

The unit lost $305 million in the first quarter because of the meltdown in the subprime mortgages. That helped drag down GM’s profit way below expectations.

Micheline Maynard covers the automotive industry for the New York Times. She says GM has made progress with its restructuring effort, and it’s had decent sales of new pick-ups and SUVs.

MICHELINE MAYNARD: The last couple of days GM’s stock has gone up and pushed Wall Street up because people were expecting a significantly better improvement, but external forces like gas prices and sub-prime mortgage markets, they’re sort of fighting against the force of General Motors to fix itself.”

Despite improvements on the automotive side, she says, the company still has a hard road ahead — especially given that Toyota has for the first time topped GM in quarterly vehicle sales.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.