Despite the impending sale of Opel and Vauxhall to France’s PSA Groupe, General Motors reaffirmed Buick will not be impacted by the shakeup, according to Car and Driver. The news follows Buick’s most recent product introduction, the 2018 Buick Regal Sportback and Regal TourX. Both are based on the 2017 Opel Insignia.
“The sale of Opel will have no impact on the fresh new lineup Buick is building out,” Duncan Aldred, GM’s vice president of global Buick and GMC, said ahead of the 2018 Regal debut.
“This is very much part of our portfolio plan,” GM’s executive vice president of global product development, purchasing, and supply chain, Mark Reuss, added. “As we said, Opel and the engineering/production piece of this is very much intact for all of our global platforms. So, you know, no impact.”
The 2018 Buick Regal Sportback and TourX will be built at Opel’s Rüsselsheim, Germany, plant, which is among six plants included in the sale of Opel and Vauxhall to PSA. The outgoing Regal has been built in Canada.
When asked if GM would have to pay PSA for future engineering work to be done at Opel, Reuss responded he was unsure of what the final agreement would state, but said this kind of operation is “pretty integrated.” Despite letting go of the brands, Reuss said electrification and diesel technology partnerships may still be on the table.
Buick’s portfolio features a handful of Opel products including the Cascada convertible, Encore subcompact crossover and Regal. GM agreed to sell the Opel and Vauxhall brands, and its European operations, for a sum of $2.3 billion last month. The final deal is expected to close towards the end of 2017.
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… and the “big SUV” which had been promised as a “second Opel flag ship” was being confirmed at yesterday’s plant meetings in the three German factories.
Moving the production of the Buick and Holden versions of the Insignia to another factory would increase costs and would leave the Rüsselsheim Opel plant with a underutilized capacity. So it is a win-win situation for both PSA and GM to continue producing the Holden and Buick versions in Germany.
There they will use the body parts stamped in house at the Rüsselsheim plant from only one set of stamping tools.
Only the Chinese Buick Regal will not be produced in Rüsselsheim, but in China itself.
What will happen after the life cycle of this new car just being started to be produced is in the stars.
I find it fascinating that the Buick Encore is made by GM Korea but Opel controls it. Does that mean Korea has to stop making it if Opel tells it to? I though GM Korea was still a division of GM, unlike the Opel plants in Germany which are part of PSA now. Or am I wrong about that?