GM to Pull Chevy From Europe to Focus on Expanding Opel

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GM to Pull Chevy From Europe to Focus on Expanding Opel
By Dorothee Tschampa - 2013-12-05T08:32:29Z

General Motors Co. (GM) is pulling the Chevy marque from Europe to focus on expanding the Opel and Vauxhall brands.

GM will end Chevy sales in the region by the end of 2015, while maintaining the division?s presence in Russia, Steve Girsky, GM?s vice chairman, said on a conference call today with reporters. Reorganization costs from the shift will total $700 million to $1 billion, with most of the charges posted in the current quarter and the first half of 2014.

?This is a win for all of our brands here in Europe and around the globe as GM will benefit from a stronger Opel/Vauxhall,? Girsky said. To pull Chevrolet out of Europe ?will help us to accelerate progress in the region.?

Chevrolet deliveries in Europe dropped 17 percent in the 10 months through October, giving the nameplate 1.2 percent of the market. Ruesselsheim, Germany-based Opel and its sister U.K. division Vauxhall posted a 3 percent decline in the period, about matching the industrywide contraction, giving the two a combined regional market share of 6.7 percent.

?The financial results have been unacceptable and the outlook is difficult? for Chevrolet in Europe, Girsky said.

Some of the brand?s ?iconic? models, such as the Corvette, will remain on sale in Europe, and the up-market Cadillac marque is working on an expansion in the region in the next three years, Detroit-based GM said today in a statement. The carmaker?s South Korean operations, which produced most Chevrolet vehicles sold in Europe, will focus on ?driving profitability, managing costs and maximizing sales opportunities.?

The strategy shift is independent of GM?s model-development partnership with Paris-based PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG), Girsky said.

Opel models introduced in the past year include the Mokka compact sport-utility vehicle and the Adam city car. The division started building the latest version of its mid-sized Insignia in August.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...y-from-europe-to-focus-on-expanding-opel.html

I suppose it's good new for Opel/Vauxhall, since GM now finally seems to have developed the common sense to quit the internal brand cannibalism in Europe.
 
Bad news. We don't get anything even remotely US anymore. And that IS a bad thing, no matter what everyone else says. :cry:
 
The Chevies you currently get here, are mostly made in Korea... so no, you haven't been getting anything remotely US :p
 
I know they're Korean, that's why I said remotely :p
 
Bad news. We don't get anything even remotely US anymore. And that IS a bad thing, no matter what everyone else says. :cry:

Ford brings the Mustang to Europe, so there is that.

As for Chevrolet, they completely destroyed the image Chevy had up until the early 2000s in Europe. By selling Daewoo cars, nobody associated them with classic American cars anymore. They were trash.


EDIT: Just read that GM wants to expand Cadillac to Europe, which makes sense. They position it above Opel/VH. I just hope they don't destroy another brand.
 
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And remember kids, in Europe the Corvette isn't a Chevrolet. It's a Corvette. So you can still buy that as well. Pulling Chevrolet is a sensible decision from GM's POV, remarkable however that it's taken this long to come to this conclusion.

Always a little sad for the consumers when competition is diminished but in this case essentially the same products, just a little nicer, will still be on sale.
 
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I'm not convinced...

They are removing Chevrolet, so they will lose that share of the market, but they won't necessarily get it back with Opel.

Chevy europe buyers will probably move to Kia, Dacia, Hyundai, etc. so the contribution to GM's bottom line will just disappear.

Opel competes at a different price point, in a slightly different place in the market.

Opel / Vauxhall need to start making better cars again instead of solid but boring stuff.

Renault manage quite well selling Dacias here and there may be a bit of overlap, but the shared platforms and engines make it worthwhile.
 
The only Chevrolet that has sold a significant amount of units recently is probably the Cruze. Or some small MPV boxes directly underneath it; everything that you can get from Opel as well. I don't think the Malibu has been a volume seller.
 
With .6% market share in Germany there's not much to lose for GM. Chevy's failure was not only due to the fact that they sold rebadged Korean crap, it was how GM introduced the rebadging.
For years, GM tried to peddle Daewoos to the unconviced car-buying public, using a big-budget marketing campaign with the jingle "Daweoo und Du - Dein Auto, Dein Freund" ("Daweoo and you - your car, your friend"). Not unlike the "Ch-ch-chi-chia pet" jingle, this jingle just had the right degree of being faux-cheerful combined with a certain melodic stickiness to be universally loathed and forgotten by no one.
So imagine the car buying public's surprise when the same crapcans, even with the same model names, suddenly showed up badged as Chevies, a brand mostly associated with angular 1970s land yachts. No one gave a damn about the rebadging. GM's campaign made sure that not a single buyer ever forgot that this cars were Daweoos.
 
Ford brings the Mustang to Europe, so there is that.

As for Chevrolet, they completely destroyed the image Chevy had up until the early 2000s in Europe. By selling Daewoo cars, nobody associated them with classic American cars anymore. They were trash.

Chevrolet was the posterchild for "american cars" in Europe. At least in my neck of the woods. Detroit spent decades and decades fooling European motorists into believing that all American cars were big, heavy, well equipped, with a V8 up front and drive going to the back. We never got the Chevy Cavaliers, Pontiac Sunfires, Ford Pintos and so forth here. And why would we? GM already had their own factories and models for Europe.

European car makers are guilty of the same thing, too. The average American would piss themselves laughing if someone told them that you could buy an A4 with an 8 valve 1.6 and crank windows back in the day, and that the present-day E, S and ML mercs can be had with a 2.1-liter 4-pot. And with a stick shift, even.

So yeah it was kind of funny when GM started marketing their "GM-Daewoos" which then got rebadged into Chevrolet. Decades of Detroit brain-washing down the drain.

In my eyes the "modern" european Chevrolet was just GM going back to the roots, selling reasonably priced cars for normal people, with rebadges here and there as needed. Just like Chevrolet has done for decades in their home market. Not many people shared my opinion though. :lol:
 
We never got the Chevy Cavaliers, Pontiac Sunfires, Ford Pintos and so forth here.

The fact that you didn't get them wasn't a bad thing. You didn't miss anything, they were absolutely shit and we wish we didn't get them *here*.
 
The fact that you didn't get them wasn't a bad thing. You didn't miss anything, they were absolutely shit and we wish we didn't get them *here*.

I know. I'm just saying. Detroit spent decades marketing "american cars" in Europe as big, luxury, thirsty and desirable. Just like Germany is known to most Americans for high-end six and eight cylinder sedans. Except for VW, anyways.

When the Daewoos arrived on our shores a decade ago, most people acted like the concept of foreign-built badge-engineered econoboxes was something new to Chevrolet.



 
Chevy's failure was not only due to the fact that they sold rebadged Korean crap, it was how GM introduced the rebadging.

Bingo. the Daewoo Chevrolet Matiz was the first one I saw rebadged, what a pile of crap. Good riddance.

Can GM also pull Chrysler out so we can get rid of the Ypsilon?
 
They sell the Ypsilon as Chrysler somewhere?? Here, it's plainly badged as a Lancia...

I never really been a Chevy fan but putting those badges on Korean econoboxes, I've never understood. Did they think the name would sell more? Did they think anyone who desired a Chevy as a kid would buy a rebadged Daewoo, sit in it, and say "Finally, I'm driving a Chevrolet!"

GM does this all over the world though. I visited Argentina, and Corsas are badged as Chevrolet over there.
 
GM does this all over the world though. I visited Argentina, and Corsas are badged as Chevrolet over there.

Exactly. And everything GM sells in China is a Buick.

Korean-made Chevrolets are just GM being GM.
 
I never really been a Chevy fan but putting those badges on Korean econoboxes, I've never understood. Did they think the name would sell more? Did they think anyone who desired a Chevy as a kid would buy a rebadged Daewoo, sit in it, and say "Finally, I'm driving a Chevrolet!"

:jeremy:

 
I always had a soft sot for the Cruze in some weird, unexplainable way, something about plenty of car for the money I think.

That said, and as is already been said numerous times here, when Joe Public in Europe thinks Chevy, he thinks American Boat, so when they started selling rebadged Daewoo 'normal' people simply did not get it, still don't, so they don't buy em, and the 'Yank driver' Culture in Europe did a collective facepalm, I remember being at a Yankmeeting days after the name change was announced, and the general consensus was that the first hatchcrapper in a nexia (or whatever the thing was called at the time) who came up to one of us at the gas station or whatever talking about how he owned an American car to, would get shot.
 
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The problematic brand identity is definitely one of the major issues, but the there's also the problem that Chevrolet still sells pretty much the same kind of crap they did, when the changeover from Daewoo happened, while the "openly Korean" brands, i.e. Hyundai/Kia have gone a long way since then, and are now competing in a different league, and Chevrolet has now been left in a awkward position, where they don't have enough style and brand recognition to compete with the frenchies and are not cheap enough to compete with Dacia either.
 
If the european market didn't quite trust Daewoo as a brand, the things they sold over here as Chevies were much more related to Open products as far as size and price than Chevrolets...
 
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