Advisers to President Barack Obama got a close look of the operations of General Motors Corp. (GM) and Chrysler LLC on Monday, touring plants and test-driving cars. They then delivered a sobering message to the company's top executives, calling for a "fundamental restructuring" of the industry, an Obama Administration official said.

The day marked the first time that members of Obama's auto-industry task force traveled to Detroit as part of their review of the companies, and it followed weeks of meetings in Washington involving industry officials and elected lawmakers. The task force, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, is reviewing requests from GM and Chrsyler for nearly $22 billion in new loans, and officials have characterized the meetings as part of broad fact-gathering effort.

Monday's meetings were expected to involve two outside advisers who are serving on the task force, Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner, according to people with knowledge of the meetings. The task force members met with senior management at GM and Chrsyler after a morning meeting with Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, and other union leaders, the administration official said.

The task force members test-drove GM's Chevrolet Volt and a fuel-cell concept car and toured the assembly line of the Dodge Ram pickup, the official said. They then told the companies' executives that Obama understands the urgency of the industry's crisis and plans to help, but that a fundamental restructuring is needed, the official said. The administration's auto team will continue to meet with stakeholders of the companies, acting with urgency but performing a deliberate review, the official said.

GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson characterized the meeting as "purely a fact-finding and learning meeting," and said the company planned to continue to work with the administration.

At Chrysler's truck assembly plant in Warren, task force members met with Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, Chief Financial Officer Ron Kolka, and other company officials.

The company said in a statement it's "fully engaged" with the administration "during this process of ensuring the industry's viability going forward." Officials declined to comment further.

-By Josh Mitchell, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6637; joshua.mitchell@dowjones.com

(Jeff Bennett and Sharon Terlep contributed to this story.)