The morning is too chilly for her flirty purple skirt and pink top, so former "Baywatch" actress Alexandra Paul wraps her bare legs in a fleece blanket and settles down for a long sidewalk vigil in Burbank, Calif. Passersby on scooters toot their horns, and a security guard smiles and waves as he walks by. Both he and the actress are there for the same reason: to keep an eye on a parking lot full of colorful, two-door cars behind a nondescript suburban office building.

Those cars are rarities, the last surviving batch of rechargeable electric coupes built by General Motors Corp. in the late 1990s. Paul and a band of homemakers, people with desk jobs, engineers, Hollywood activists and car enthusiasts are 23 days into a round-the-clock vigil aimed at keeping GM from destroying the cars.