General Motors South Korea will be idling its plant in the southwestern city of Gunsan for nine days this month, up from six days in March, due to slumping Chevrolet sales in Europe. The Gangnam Gunsan plant builds the Chevrolet Cruze compact car and Orlando MPV, which it distributes globally, and has an annual production capacity of 260,000 vehicles. It is one of five GM factories in South Korea, which amount to 40 percent of all Chevrolet vehicles sold around the world.
According to Automotive News Europe, Chevrolet sales have dipped  39 percent from January to February 2013 in the EU, to 18,790 total units. The industry on average has dropped 10 percent. Year over year, European Chevy Cruze sales found themselves at 5,035 units for the first two months of 2013, down from 5,704 units. Taking a much sharper dive was the Orlando, which saw sales fall from 3,955 to 2,101 in the same time period.
There’s also the looming threat of North Korea, which GM CEO Dan Akerson stated that if tensions escalate, production will be temporarily pulled from South Korea altogether.
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And some in this forum seriously believed that Chevrolet were going to end up replacing Vauxhall and Opel in Europe – well it was never likely and and on current performance never will, they would be better pulling Chevrolet out of Europe altogether and be done with it.
Absolutely agree! Chevrolets growth has come to an end in Western Europe, meanwhile the presence of these cheaper cars damages the image of Opel. Most people in Germany believe that GM plans to replace Opel by Chevrolet so they have no trust to the Opel brand!