Currently, every Chevrolet sold in Europe is imported from either Asia or North America. At the same time, the brand has been trending upwards when it comes to sales for the region. Also at the same time, Opel and Vauxhall sales (and profits) have been slumping, and GM plants all over the European continent are operating below full capacity. This causes the division to bleed more money than it needs to. And considering that GM Europe lost $256 million last quarter, changes are imminent.
Along with an outline of changes for Opel, Karl-Friedrich Stracke has reportedly gone on record in saying that GM Europe is “in discussions with management in Detroit and Shanghai to study whether or not there is merit in building Chevrolet vehicles in Europe to improve capacity usage.”
Continuing, “it is not a cost-cutting plan at all. It is much rather a comprehensive plan to quickly improve profitability, irrespective of if and how much the market is going to pick up steam. The plan will allow us to significantly increase our margins, market share and sales.”
We can expect to know more about what happns next after Opel’s Supervisory Board Meeting in June.
Comments
You know what would help us readers, is if GMA broke down the Opel line up and cars that are comming. Give us an understanding where they are built and how this impacts the bottom line, what were sales like for various models before the slump. Ect… Break it down for us, maybe you guys have done this and It was an article I didn’t read, although I read almost all of the articles…
You can find Opel production and sales statistics at the Opel company website, page “facts and figures” http://www.opel.com/experience_opel/company-information/facts-figures.html
Look for the link “See all Facts & Figures” and you get the “Facts and figures 2011” report as PDF file; production statistics by country and plant are on page 34.
For enquiries about the current and future lineup check http://www.opel.com
Or you can just check this for Opel news:
http://www.gmauthority.com/blog/category/opel/
I guess what I want to gather is does Opel have the right line up or should they condense there line up and stream line production and make sure they have the right product on the market. We keep hearing they want to go up market but then we see this Adam micro car thing, just sayin…
It’s not so much that Opel has the wrong products, it’s just that the brand is competing in a hugely over-saturated market with other brands that continue to look for temporary solutions to this problem rather than long term restructuring.
The title says could an ‘american’ brand be the key for a european turnaround. But chevrolet is a global brand. I no longer consider it just an american brand.
If you want to check out the Vauxhall and Chevy lineups in the UK, go to their .co.uk websites.
Opel in the UK will always trail Vauxhall because of lingering anti-german resentment post two world wars.