SANTA MONICA, California — Trucks and SUVs will continue to see a diminished role in the North American new car market, Troy Clarke, president of GM North America and GM group vice president, told Inside Line in an interview on Thursday.

'It feels like this is the early 1980s,' he said. 'It's not going to be 40 percent trucks; it's going to be 30, maybe even 25. Cars are going to be a much bigger player.'

Though he terms this a structural shift, Clarke argues that new car sales will recover from the current 12.7-million-units-per-year pace. 'We think the market should be running probably just a little north of 14 million units,' he said.

'We've optimistically said that stability will probably come in the fourth quarter, but I don't know that that's the case,' he continued. 'I think there are a lot of experts now who suggest it may not be until the second quarter of next year.'

One trend General Motors has noticed among consumers who are in the market, Clarke said, is that former truck-based SUV owners are not downsizing to car-based crossover vehicles as previously anticipated. Instead, he said, 'they're falling into cars. Crossover buyers are moving up from cars.'

And although GM's Employee Discount Program has generated sales increases among full-size trucks and SUVs, Clarke said, he also conceded that the Chevrolet Volt is the 'most valuable brand in the GM portfolio.

'At an awareness level, the Volt obviously has consideration intent (based on 80,000 leads submitted on GM's Web site),' he said.

'Everybody who's heard of the Volt can give you a description of what they think it is. Part of the role of our market research is to understand that, so that we make sure that as we execute the vehicle on something other than just its technical basis, we can build on the brand that the concept has already created.'

Clarke also elaborated on GM's plan for its conventional small-car lineup. In addition to the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, the next-generation Aveo will share its platform architecture with the European-market Opel/Vauxhall Corsa.

'The current Corsa is not federalized and it would be prohibitively expensive to make it able to be sold in the U.S.,' he said. 'But the Aveo and Corsa are shared in the next generation — they'll be the B-Class platform with a launch in the early part of the next decade.'