Topic: Global GM - meet a new Opel

[Bezor]

G.M. Hopes New Car Has International Appeal
By ERIC PFANNER and BILL VLASIC
Published: October 1, 2008

PARIS — Accompanied by break dancers, executives at Chevrolet unveiled a car on Wednesday that the company hoped would lure American consumers out of Toyota and Honda showrooms and broaden the American carmaker’s appeal in international markets.

General Motors presented the Chevrolet Cruze at a ceremony Wednesday in Paris. The decision to show the car right before the Paris auto show reflected G.M.’s focus on international presence.

General Motors’ decision to show the car here, on the eve of the Paris auto show, reflected its increasing dependency on its international markets for its sales and car development.

With fuel prices hovering near record levels, G.M. and its Detroit rivals, Ford and Chrysler, have been struggling to respond to a shift in demand from consumers, who are abandoning gas-guzzling trucks and sport utility vehicles in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. To fill the gaps in their United States lineups, the Big Three American automakers are turning to their European and Asian operations or foreign partners.

“As soon as the market went into a 180-degree turn over the last 18 months, it was unsurprising to learn that the Detroit carmakers had empty cupboards,” said Peter Schmidt, managing director of Automotive Industry Data, a research firm in Britain. “No carmaker can respond overnight to such a change in demand, so they had to turn elsewhere.”

The Cruze, a compact car with an arched roofline, slanted headlights and a two-tier grille, was engineered and designed in Europe and Asia, with G.M. tapping resources from the former Daewoo Motor, which it acquired in 2001.

The car will be built in South Korea as well as in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Lordstown, Ohio. Chevrolet plans to start selling the car in Europe next year, with other regions, including the United States, to follow in 2010.



The Cruze will be the “ambassador” for Chevrolet’s approach to globalization, Wayne Brannon, executive director of Chevrolet Europe, said. “It’s essential to be able to compete on a global basis.”

Ford has taken a similar approach with a new version of the Fiesta, a subcompact car that was largely developed in Europe, on a platform shared with Mazda of Japan, in which Ford owns a strategic stake. Manufacturing has begun in Cologne, Germany; the Fiesta will also be built in Valencia, Spain, and in China, Thailand and Mexico. It is scheduled to be introduced in the United States in 2010.

G.M., which lost $15.5 billion in the second quarter, is trying to turn Chevrolet, an iconic American brand, into a bigger global player. While Ford sells cars under its flagship brand everywhere, G.M. cars, including the Opel and the Vauxhall, are sold under different brands in different countries.

But more important, American automakers expect to make a profit on the stylish new models — something that has eluded them with other compacts, at least in North America.

At an event in August at the Lordstown plant, Rick Wagoner, G.M.’s chairman, said the Cruze’s fuel economy and stylish package should allow the company to charge a higher price than it had for previous compacts.

Industry analysts also see the Cruze as a forerunner in the industry’s shift to better-equipped, fuel-efficient small cars that can actually be profitable.

Another American automaker, Chrysler, has stopped short of its bigger rivals in global product development. Instead, Chrysler is looking to outside suppliers to try to compete in small cars. Chrysler has reached agreements with Nissan of Japan and Chery Automotive of China to export cars to the United States and sell them under Chrysler brand names.

The Cruze and the Fiesta are not the first “world cars” from the Big Three. After the oil crises of the 1970s, Ford took a similar approach in the development of the Escort, a small car that was adapted for American consumers from a European model.

But the idea fell out of favor in Detroit as global auto markets diverged, with Americans opting for minivans and other light trucks. A European-developed car from Ford, the Mondeo, had only limited success when it was sold in North America as the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique in the 1990s. Moreover, the car cost $6 billion to develop and became a symbol of the fractured state of Ford’s global operations.

Another small sedan, the Focus, has done better globally: Ford executives project that the automaker will build two million cars off the platform by 2012, making it the largest volume for any single platform in the industry.

The new Fiesta was originally intended primarily for European and Asian markets. But as oil prices rose and American started looking at smaller cars again, the high-mileage Fiesta was added to Ford’s North American plans. The Fiesta will give Ford its first entry in the pint-size B-car segment in the United States, which Ford sees as an essential part of its worldwide growth. The company’s product development chief, Derrick Kuzak, said recently that the global B-car segment would grow to 21 million vehicles by 2014, nearly double what it was five years ago.

While Europeans have long paid far more than Americans to fill up their tanks, largely because of higher taxes on oil, European consumers have been moving toward more fuel-efficient models this year.

In France, where the government imposed a tax on gas guzzlers on Jan. 1, sales of sport utility vehicles fell 28 percent in the first seven months, even as the overall market grew by nearly 4 percent, Mr. Schmidt said. Germany and other European countries are considering similar taxes, he added.

“The likelihood is that the patterns we are seeing in the French market today will be echoed elsewhere — small cars!” Mr. Schmidt said.

[Ultra]

GM needs to find something appealing to sell, quick.

 

[Bezor]

I like (gasp) GM's styling of late.  Tho to be critical, of the picture I posted, for a production car, I see too strong a reliance on Audi.

But nonetheless, at least GM has solid ideas that they finally are putting into action. 

Time will tell, and for them, time seems to be moving faster than for others.

[Ultra]

Time will tell, and for them, time seems to be moving faster than for others.

Good summary.