Last week it was reported Opel and Vauxhall’s new owners, PSA Groupe, had officially frozen development on all projects begun under General Motors. It’s not an uncommon practice as the French automakers will spend 100 days to comb over the future product and likely merge vehicles and use its own technology.
The one confirmed victim of this thus far is Opel’s range-topping crossover, which was expected to share underpinnings with the 2017 Opel Insignia Grand Sport. With Opel’s luxury crossover chopped, as does Holden’s version. Motoring reports plans for a Holden version of the Opel crossover—often referred as the Monza—have been shelved for good.
The luxury crossover was first confirmed by Opel in 2014 while under GM ownership and was expected to appear before the end of this decade. If the crossover was indeed to ride on the Insignia’s platform, it would have been E2Â based. We’ve heard the upcoming Cadillac XT4 will also ride on the E2 platform, which means the crossover likely would have been related. Other intel points to the crossover-dedicated C1XX platform as would-have-been potential architecture.
Without a Holden variant of the crossover, it leaves the Australian brand with the Holden Trailblazer and upcoming Holden Acadia and Holden Equinox as its crossover and SUV range. The Acadia will likely fit the bill as a more luxurious CUV, though Opel’s CUV project was poised to be even more luxurious.
Comments
They probably could of easily put the enclave to fill that position
Don’t understand how it is cheaper to import vehicles from a company no longer owned by GM than to make your own at home.
If they made small cars at home, they’d have to pay UAW labour rates.
Granted the UAW agreed to lower wages before they built the Sonic in Orion Township, but it’s not likely that every UAW factory (not just those under GM) would agree to lower wages to build a smaller car. Therefore, it’s cheaper to ship them in.
The insignia is not a small car and when you close a auto manufacturing plant you don’t just lose jobs in the plant you also lose jobs in the supply chain.. I am not so sure its just the UAW wages. Think GM want to cut its losses just so they can show a profit. I also think that type of tactic will come back to haunt them. I would love to know how Australia wages compare to Germany wages.
I think I read somewhere the average wage of a worker at the GM Elizabeth plant was or is about AUD70,000 per annum including holidays, sick leave and all benefits. On today’s exchange rate that’s about 46,700 Euros. I have no idea what a Russelsheim plant worker makes on average, but it’s not as simple as comparing worker wages.
The other main consideration is productivity or throughput. And that factor is related to the technology and systems in the factory eg. robots, modern assembly lines with worker ergonomics, and the productivity of the staff themselves, eg. efficient, effective, low or nil sick days etc.
On the factory floor at the Rüsselsheim Opel plant, there were once more than 20,000 workers. Today, when they work in three shifts (morning, afternoon, night), there are slightly more than 4000.
But up tp 7000 people in research, development and design, plus some thousand in adminstration.
RIP Holden
to PSA plant in France wages is about 2000 euro (monthly) .PSA plants in Spain wafes are about 1500 euro (monthly)