With the sale of Opel and Vauxhall to PSA Groupe, General Motors will rely on the French automaker to build a German car for export as an American Buick and Australian Holden. Globalization at its finest. However, following Opel’s latest future roadmap, released last week, PSA doesn’t plan on keeping the current Insignia around very long.
In fact, it has a lifespan of, at max, six years. PSA Groupe said it will accelerate the transition from GM architectures and all Opel vehicles will ride on the French automaker’s platforms by 2024 at the latest. The current Opel Insignia—North America’s Buick Regal Sportback and Australia’s Holden ZB Commodore—currently rides on GM’s E2 platform. Obviously, there’s no future for E2 at Opel. PSA will scale the brand’s current platforms from nine to just two for greater efficiency and synergies.
Opel, and parent company PSA, will supply the 2018 Regal and its variants for its lifecycle after GM moved production from Canada to Germany for the latest car. But, GM must have a future gameplan for the sedan and station wagon, aka, the Buick Regal TourX.
Either a replacement and development of the next car are already underway or the Regal could simply go away after Opel completes its shift from GM to PSA architecture.
Comments
GM can build it in Kansas City with the Malibu.
“by 2024”, which is in seven years, a quite regular life cycle for a car model.
I understand that also in the rest-GM there is no future for the E2XX platform, but for the GM modular vehicle construction sets under the “VSS” abbreviation.
But what apparently is being accelerated is the move or production of the Karl/Viva and remaining Mokka production from Korea to Europe, possibly — I presume — in their current GM based state, i.e. without developing a successor with PSA basis.
Except — when they announced that a new SUV would start production in Eisenach (Opel factory in former GDR) in 1919, that would be on a new technical basis, not the same Mokka as we know today.
Everyone forgets that every year Shangi GM builds around 100,000 Buick Regals in China, still on th E2XX platform. So in the next 7 years GM will need to decide its future as well. Perhaps build Aus and USA Buicks in China not Germany, will see!
BUICK = BUIld Cars in Kansas.
It already has – it’s moving to the new VSS architecture. E2XX will be a moot point in 7 years time.
Its also built in USA, and there’s spare capacity in Korea. The just superseded Commodore was a 20 year old platform.
Bring the production to USA with a Malibu and why not a Malibu off road break
I’m assuming that GM will be producing the Buick Regal in all variations soon in Canada or the USA! That’s logical, because PSA wants to quickly reduce the platforms! Furthermore, the Euro to Dollar exchange rate is not hedged and this is another major disadvantage. Why were no exchange rate hedged by GM?
Question: Where is the China Buick Regal being built?
My guess is GM will monitor how well the Envision sells in the USA since it is built in China and shipped there for sale. If it continues to do well (currently, over 40,000 will be sold in the USA this year making it the second most sold Buick in the USA in 2017 behind the Korean built Buick Encore) then the Regal will come from China as well in the future. Otherwise, it will come from the USA or be discontinued (also likely since Buick cannot sell cars if it wanted to – the new LaCrosse is struggling mightily).
Well, it went away in the US… however basically every car and SUV that’s a unibody vehicle in the GM line-up can trace its roots to E2XX. Hopefully they kept some of those engineers from Opel and SAAB around.