Opel and Vauxhall Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) are becoming quite the success in Europe in 2015, experiencing a 26 percent growth year-over-year to 85,000 vehicle sales in Europe from the beginning of the year to mid-October. By comparison, the market grew by just eight percent.
The GM subsidiary states that “after just the first six months of this year, Opel was able to announce a result that exceeded expectations”, while also selling more LCVs ten months into 2015 than in all of 2014.
“This is a fantastic accomplishment for our newly created team,” says Steffen Raschig, Director Commercial Vehicles. “We were also able to significantly grow the segment shares of our three core models Combo, Vivaro and Movano. Overall, our LCV business grew by more than 26 percent – while the European market grew by just almost eight percent.”
Opel attributes the growth to restructuring its LCV operations, bundling all European LCV activities into one team with the goal of significantly expanding the LCV side of the business as part of Opel’s DRIVE! 2022 growth strategy. What’s also impressive is that the new Vivaro now holds over 11 percent market share in its segment, while generating over 100,000 orders for the van since opening the order books.
Compared to all of 2014, the Opel’s strongest growth in the commercial vehicle space came from:
Opel’s Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) range consists of:
At a time of year when luxury car ATP usually rises.
Sales decreased 5.6 percent to 16,670 units during the first ten months of 2024.
Specifically critical minerals supply chain development.
Scheduled for a Spring 2025 launch.
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What's keeping GM from bringing these vans to US? Do any of you guys know? Express/Savana vans are so passed due for major updates. GM is way behind FCA & Ford in this game.
Greg, the Movano and Vivaro vans are great, but were never designed with global markets in mind, so they would need some very heavy reworking in hardware (especially safety) to get them to North America. The Combo, meanwhile, is a rebadged Fiat:
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2011/07/opel-reveals-next-generation-combo/
We should have an opinion piece about these vehicles over the next few days. Stay tuned!
And the Opel/Vauxhall Combo, badge-engineered from the FIAT Dobló, is already being marketed in the USA as the RAM Promaster City.
Actually, the Combo is rather more than a badge-engineered Fiat Doblo.
For starters it is built on the joint GM/Fiat SCCS platform which underpins Corsa, Meriva, Combo and Adam for GM; Punto, Linea, 500 X & L and Doblo for Fiat; Alfa Romeo Mito; Jeep Renegade and Compass; Ram Promaster City.
Secondly, it uses a combination of GM Powertrain, Fiat and even Chrysler engines.
All Opel/Vauxhall and Fiat/Ram variants of the SCCS van platform are manufactured by Tofas in Turkey. Tofas is a JV company in which KOC and Fiat each hold 37.8% interest, with the remainder of shares being under public subscription.
Every light commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe (with the exception of Ford and Iveco - and even they have previous history together), share platforms, bodies and engines with a variety of partners, eg. GME with Renault and Fiat; Mercedes Benz with Renault and VW; PSA with Fiat, etc.
For info, Tofas also builds Peugeot and Citroen models.
@Rockeman: Is the Dobló really on the SCCS platform? Well, that one seems to be a really very productive architecture.
The problem with commercial vehicles is that they are being sold in very lower numbers than passenger vehicles. Therefore all those combinations you mention.
But your list needs some additional info and clarifications:
a) Daimler Benz is global partner of the Renault/Nissan alliance; while Renault and Nissan have a substantial cross capital participation, with Daimler Benz it is very small, 3.5% (divided up in 1.75% packages for Nissan and Renault). I heard of a plan to build Infiniti cars with Mercedes engines...
And VW and Daimler Benz are parting company. The VW Crafter was built together with his twin Mercedes Sprinter in the Mercedes factory in Düsseldorf, but VW is building a factory on its own for their new Crafter model in Poland, ending the badge engineering. VW is trying to become the largest commercial vehicle manufacturer by combining Scania, MAN and VW Commerical Vehicles...
b) GM is also partnering with PSA on a new small commercial vehicle, and in the USA with Nissan.
c) In 1987, PSA and FIAT formed SEVEL. acronym of "Société Européenne de Véhicules Légers" (European Light Vehicle Company), with two separate units "SEVEL Nord" in France and "SEVEL Sud" in Italy. The common vans were produced in SEVEL Nord, but Fiat severed that alliance after acquiring Chrysler with the Chrysler Voyager. The joint venture in Italy is garantieed at least until 2019 (source: en.Wikipedia).
Observer 7, following the 'diesel-gate' scandal, one has to wonder how long MAN and Scania will remain part of VAG, as it needs to raise capital to not only correct the software issues but to also compensate affected owners particularly in the USA and inevitably individual states (California, New York, Michigan, etc.) will file law-suits too.
Time will tell.
Anyway, the famous phrase "C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute" pronounced by Napoleon's chief of police, Joseph Fouché after the execution of Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien in 1804 on trumped-up charges, applies to this treachery by whomever within the VW organisation. "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder" in English.
At the same time, it shows how necessary it is to lay open all software controlling an automobile and stopping to claim that whoever bought a car does not own the most central pieces of it.
Yes. I would love to know what is going in the full sized passenger van market with GM.its seems like they don't give a d--- about their customers that have supported them for the last century,because nobody wants to tell you what is going on,and nobody will buy an express or savanna if you can get a Mercedes Sprinter.The fords seating is terrible,with seats built for kindergarten kids.
You are doing it again! You have completely left out the biggest contributer to these figures: They should read:
Ireland: + 50 percent
UK Vauxhall: + 37.9 per cent
Poland: + 20 percent
Finland: + 19 percent
Spain: + 12 percent
France: + 11 percent
And just to add to the prejudice of the 85,000 units sold 31,308 were from Vauxhall in the UK (36.5% of the total) also Opel sales in Ireland are managed by Vauxhall in the UK
Wow. You really get butt-hurt whenever your precious brand sells a few units here and there, don't you? Do yourself a favor and read the first line of the article. Does it mention Vauxhall. It does? OMG!!!
Wow. You really are a butt-head at reading replies. Do yourself a favour and read what I said - I was talking about the fact that Vauxhall were left out of the list of sales increases. Does it mention Vauxhall? - it doesn't. OMG!!!
David, my name is Chris and I wrote this article.
I wanted to point out that I open the article with:
"Opel and Vauxhall Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) are becoming quite the success in Europe in 2015, experiencing a 26 percent growth year-over-year to 85,000 vehicle sales in Europe."
Vauxhall is right there in the first three words of the article; it's also in the title.
The rest are quotes attributed to Mr. Raschig.
I would not call that "left out"... quite the opposite, in fact.
Chris I am well aware that the article was posted by you and I am also fully aware of what the opening line says, that IS NOT what I took issue with, the point is you or whoever else was involved in making the list of the top performing countries, THEY LEFT OUT THE 2ND BIGGEST GAINER! That is what I took issue with and whichever way you look at it I would call that "left out". Somebody should be checking this sort of thing BFEORE they get posted.
David, the information regarding the top five biggest-growing markets was provided by Opel itself. Now, there are a few things that can be happening here.
1. Opel's release is blatantly wrong, lying, or incorrect.
2. Opel's release did not count Vauxhall
3. Vauxhall did not gain the numbers that you are suggesting
I'd be happy to review any and all source information that you are looking at. If you could email me with it, I would be grateful. -- chris at gmauthority dot com --
Chris,
Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but the monthly UK sales figures (as reported by David 1256) are not supplied by Vauxhall itself, but are jointly published by by the SMMT and the UK Government's DVLA - Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency. I would suggest they are pretty robust!
rocketman is correct the figures are taken directly from the SMMT website, I would suggest your second reason is probably correct which means Steffen Raschig needs a rocket up his rear end - just in time for Guy Fawkes night. Here is the link their site:
http://www.smmt.co.uk/2015/10/commercial-vehicle-registrations-post-further-gains-in-september/
Well, they try to give the impression of two completely separate brands, and so even in the English language Opel press releases, they mostly talk only about Opel. For the press release reporting the Vauxhall LCV success, one has to look up the Vauxhall site:
http://media.gm.com/media/gb/en/vauxhall/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/gb/en/2015/vauxhall/10-06-commercial-vehicles-ahead-in-growing.html
The Corsavan is not marketed everywhere, e.g. not in Germany.
But certainly in the UK -- and where else?
GM Commercial at this moment is really in a sad state. Back in the 90's & 2000's we were doing great. Great products. A little high in price but most commercial accounts looked a the total cost of vehicle ownership over its life time and GM was on top. Now what joke, old vans that are overpriced, no Medium Duty trucks, Cab over trucks. Commercial accounts are saying good bye GM! I am Glad I am no longer selling GM Commercial products.
Well, you know, there was that whole bankruptcy thing. Rejoice, however, there already is an agreement in place for GM and International to collaborate on a new line of medium duty trucks by 2016-2017, and possibly even bigger trucks after that, plus Isuzu will re-join GM in making tilt cab trucks for Chevrolet Commercial dealers too.
The vans are aged, however many they sell, they still make money on them, they are now the least expensive and most conventional full size vans on the market and the only van with a conventional V8 option on all series, and there still is a pretty big market for people that just want a simple "VAN" van. There is a replacement in the works somewhere, though I don't think it will be a European based van, it will be based on the Silverado/Sierra platform, but with high roof options like a GM version of the Nissan NV.
The Opel Blitz truck was a huge success in its time. It was the most important vehicle of the "Wehrmacht" in WW2 (Daimler-Benz was ordered to build it, too, under licence from Opel, but never managed to achieve the quality of the original Opel product).
The second and third generations ware quite successful, too. A major problem was that Opel did not offer Diesel engines.
The end came when the Opel Blitz was replaced by the "Bedford Blitz".
Blitz = Lightning. The name of that truck is the source of the lightning in the current Opel logo.