GM's board of directors is not likely to bow to pressure from four hedge funds and buy back $8 billion shares of stock.

If history is any guide, General Motors’ board of directors is almost certain to reject the recent demands by the leader of a bloc of four hedge funds to repurchase $8 billion in stock and a seat on the company’s board of directors.

However, the move isn’t unprecedented in the auto industry, as activist investors have succeeded in exerting significant operational control in the past. Perhaps most notably at the former Chrysler Corp. when Kirk Kerkorian, aided by Chrysler’s own executives, helped deliver Chrysler to Jurgen Schrempp’s Daimler-Benz in the now infamous “merger of equals.”

Harry Wilson, the ambitious management consultant leading the charge against GM’s current management group, is already suggesting the company’s progress towards the higher profit margins demanded by some investors is too slow. Moreover, the plan itself provides too little details on how to reach the key objectives.

“There is absolutely a lack of confidence amongst investors of the company achieving its targets,” Wilson. “There’s a substantial amount of shareholder frustration.”

GM disclosed the proposal in a statement this week. The timing of the disclosure indicates that the proposal from Wilson and the hedge funds will be presented to shareholders via the proxy statement, which will be mailed to stockholders sometime in late March or April and at the annual shareholders meeting.

It clearly points towards several more weeks around Barra’s management team, which was still coping with the fallout from the ignition-switch recall that has already cost the company roughly $3 billion and is still not finished. In fact, GM will be dealing with the extensive litigation from the ignition-switch recall for months – perhaps years – to come.

Moreover, the hedge fund proposal and Wilson’s subsequent comments indicate a substantial number of investors believe that the restructuring of General Motors hasn’t gone far enough. The judgment, even by a minority of activist shareholders, could force a review of GM’s loss-making operations in Europe and even GM’s expensive effort to upgrade Cadillac, which is unlikely to produce results in the short or even medium term.

The proposals, which are apparently spearheaded by Appaloosa and Hayman, also clearly show some very serious money can be squeezed out of the new GM. Appaloosa and its principal partner, David Tepper, swooped down on Delphi Corp. when it mired in deep distress following GM’s bankruptcy. He also made several billion dollars in the process.

Delphi’s exit from bankruptcy allowed the company to break union contracts, close plants and abandon pension obligations. No one is suggesting that anything quite so dramatic would happen to GM. But clearly Wilson and company will push for serious change, starting with divesting GM of a substantial cash reserves.

GM has “way more cash than it needs, and that creates an opportunity to buy back a stock that’s very cheap,” Wilson told Reuters, noting GM could end 2015 with about $30 billion in cash, which suggests it will have at least $10 billion in excess cash, if not more.

GM’s board of directors obviously was feeling some pressure from investors even before Wilson and company swung into action and very deliberately raised its shareholder dividend recently despite the payouts for the ignition-switch recall.

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The other unknown is whether Wilson is simply a stalking horse for major investors, such as Tepper and Kyle Bass, the head of the Hayman Group.

The 41-year-old Wilson, a 1993 Harvard graduate, is clearly very ambitious. He worked at Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group and Silver Point Capital, an investment fund, before being selected by Steve Rattner to join the Obama administration task force assembled to restructure GM and the former Chrysler Group LLC in 2009. Treasury Department said in April 2014 that it lost $11.2 billion on its investments in GM.

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After leaving Washington, Wilson returned to New York ran as a Republican for comptroller of the state of New York, which controls the state’s substantial pension funds. He lost the race to the Democratic incumbent by a relatively small margin. He went on to found the Maeva Group, and has worked on restructurings at several other companies.

Wilson told Reuters that his experience at Visteon after he joined its board in 2011 convinced him that GM could be made more profitable.

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“There was not enough focus on goals and milestones” at Visteon, he said. Since the summer of 2012, he says, Visteon’s stock has more than tripled after it underwent a substantial restructuring that include the divestiture of almost all of the company’s unionized factories.