Just a day before its historic return to the New York Stock Exchange, General Motors confirmed Wednesday that it would expand its initial public offering of common shares by 31 percent.

The company, responding to superheated investor demand for its stock, said it will raise the size of its IPO to 478 million common shares from the previously announced 365 million. Most of the common stock will be sold by the U.S. government, which is trying to unload what is now a 61 percent stake in the country's largest automaker.

The IPO, scheduled for Thursday, will cap a stunning resurrection for an automaker that nearly ran out of cash in 2008 and lost more than $80 billion in the four years leading up to its bankruptcy filing last year.

"This is, in my knowledge, one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporate history," said Anant Sundaram, a finance professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.