Deal of A Lifetime

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Hey, come on down! If you're 62, you may qualify for $13,000 toward a new car, plus health-care coverage for life. If you're only 50, forget the car, but take home up to $1,500 monthly and those health benefits. And get this: there are no limits on your earnings in your next line of work.

Sound good? General Motors certainly hopes so. For just such deals, all GM employees have to do is quit their job. In a drive to streamline its entire 289,000 hourly work force in less than two years, GM has begun to offer some of the most generous early-retirement packages in the company's history. They even received the official backing of the U.A.W. for giving workers an opportunity to begin a second career with both a steady income and paid insurance. Eager GM workers are advised, however, to read the fine print. The offer does not apply to employees whose skills are deemed too valuable to lose. When the deadline expires March 1, only 10,000 of the 50,000 hourly employees marked for retrenchment by 1995 may qualify, and severance terms in the future may not be so benevolent. Just as sobering: the $450 million marked to finance the retirement packages for GM's older employees will draw down a $600 million fund originally established to provide training for active GM workers.