NEW YORK --- General Motors' bid to sell its "good" parts into a new company and emerge from bankruptcy protection began Tuesday as hundreds of lawyers converged on a Manhattan courthouse.

GM, whose June 1 filing for bankruptcy protection was the fourth-largest in U.S. history, is hoping to avoid a lengthy sale hearing that could drag out the process and postpone its emergence from Chapter 11. Last month, objections from a group of bondholders and others dragged out rival Chrysler LLC's sale hearing for three days.

On Tuesday, GM CEO Fritz Henderson was questioned for several hours by attorneys for the various parties challenging the sale, including bondholders, consumer groups and unions.

Despite U.S. Judge Robert Gerber's urging for the attorneys to keep their arguments concise and to avoid redundancies among their questioning, Tuesday's hearing dragged on as a parade of lawyers made their way up to the podium to question Mr. Henderson.

When asked about the current condition of GM, Mr. Henderson testified that the automaker's June sales were "slightly better than expected" excluding fleet sales, which he partly attributed to the company's progress toward an exit from Chapter 11.

Under a government-backed deal, General Motors Corp. will sell most of its assets to a newly created company, 60 percent owned by the U.S. government. The Canadian government will get a 12.5 percent stake while the United Auto Workers union will take a 17.5 percent share to fund its health care obligations. Unsecured bondholders receive the remaining 10 percent.

Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

The remaining pieces of the company, including some closed plants, will become the "Old GM" and be liquidated.

GM hopes to emerge as a leaner company, less burdened by debt and labor costs as it faces a severe recession that has sapped car and truck sales.

Automakers, which are due to report June U.S. sales today, have seen sales fall 37 percent over the first five months of the year.

Consumer groups and individuals with product-related liability claims against the company are objecting to the sale because they will be forced to seek compensation from "Old GM," the collection of mostly unprofitable assets left over from the sale, where there will likely be nothing left to pay their claims.

GM late last week agreed to take on responsibility for future legal claims related to vehicles made by the old company. That means that consumers who claim they were injured by a defective GM vehicle made before the sale will be able to sue the new company for damages.

If a person has a pending claim against the automaker for injuries suffered before June 1, or hasn't filed suit yet for a past incident, they still will have to seek damages against the old company.