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GM exits Europe with Opel-Vauxhall sale

jCandlish

Titanium
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Jun 1, 2011
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Oberaargau, Swizerland
Detroit News said:
General Motors Co. is exiting the third-largest automotive market in the world with the sale of its money-losing European business to French carmaker PSA Group. With the $2.2 billion sale announced Monday, GM said it will focus on more profitable markets and products, as well as new technologies like electric cars, fuel cells and autonomous vehicles.

GM exits Europe with Opel-Vauxhall sale

There is not enough Socialism in Europe to support GM.
 
GM exits Europe with Opel-Vauxhall sale

There is not enough Socialism in Europe to support GM.

Not enough dumb as boxen of roxen STUPIDITY, you mean.

I rented an Opel once. Medium-eggplant sized one common to Faux-hole.

Got as far as Adliswil. Took it back to Kloten straight away and upgraded to a Mercedes six before the silly thing and its alleged tires killed my Wife and I en route to Brientz.

Y'all should celebrate that marque's burial across the whole of Europe with a beer fest to rival Munchen's best!

GM wudda sold it fifty years ago, save the East Germans already had better cars from Trabant and Wartburg, Dutch bicycles would out-corner an Opel in the wet, Romanian horse-carts out-brake it, and NOBODY else was nearly as bad-off as to consider buying it.

Getting PSA to take it has probably added fifty-million on-call blow-jobs to the US national debt, the basket case GM is.
 
with GM shutting holden here they supposedly supplying the new branded commodore as a opel import....now they have sold the plant there o/s.

the bailout should have been on terms current management should leave GM.....needs new management
 
the bailout should have been on terms current management should leave GM.....needs new management

GM are one company as might be better-off with no 'management' at all.

They'd get the same quality of guidance from empty chairs around a bare conference table, and at least save executive salaries, expense accounts, and perks.
 
GM wudda sold it fifty years ago, save the East Germans already had better cars from Trabant...

Now THAT'S harsh. More so than the vintage review for the Merc 240D that said it couldn't be counted on to "spin the tires on a wet car-park floor." I don't disagree with that one either- I stopped counting my '77 300D's 0-100 time at 25 seconds.

I recently drove around in a 2017 Yukon Denali. It's mind-numbing there's a market for anything like that. Canadians share the Austrailian sentiments towards Opel/Vauxhall.
 
We were in Europe 25 ish years ago and rented an Opel Vectra which I believe was a low priced car at the time . We put thousands of kilos on it without any concerns , nothing special. When Gm killed off Saturn several years ago we looked at the Opel they sold badged as a Saturn ? I guess it was the Astra small wagon very peppy 4 cyl stickshift a very nice car firesale price. Ultimately decided against it because I was afraid of ending up with an orphan if we needed parts or warranty. Bought a used Grand Am instead , served us well .
...Trevor
 
the opel is not regarded as a good car anyway that also is a problem...as well as the productivity issue.

Japanese cars wipe the floor with them

There had been a big hue and cry that the production facilities of Adam Opel AG - 100% owned by GM even prior to 1939 - weren't bombed, War Two.

As GM head, than years later Secretary of Defense, Wilson had probably advised his War Two predecessors that leaving Opel trucks a mainstay of Hitler's Wehrmacht transport was more detrimental to Germany's War effort than flattening the Opel factories and driving him over to the French-built Fords Henry & Edsel were getting awards from Hitler for, or seeing Albert Speer up the production of the better German marques.

Pretty effective 'cripplers', Opel were...

:)
 
...leaving Opel trucks a mainstay of Hitler's Wehrmacht transport was more detrimental to Germany's War effort than flattening the Opel factories...

OUCH. I don't happen to know who might have formulated the policy or whether it was in fact intended to protect GM's investment, but it appears to have been strategically correct, if not ethically. Opels are crap, not on a par with Vauxhall but still in the long tradition of crap from "Government Motors." Remember when they tried to market the Nova in Latin America? No va, indeed. Absent that bailout with taxpayer money GM would already be long gone. Abandoning Europe is a total admission of the company's inability to compete.
 
I see where the Roman Army conquered Armenia that year. Maybe the Armenians were mechanized with Opel trucks.

LOL! Didn't turn out to be one of Rome's wiser moves, did that?

Opel sewing machines? Nah.

Opel bicycles, maybe. That was their high-water mark, technologically.

GM bought them when? Controlling interest 1929-31, full and final buy-out by 1936?

Can't really blame the Russelsheim based clan for what happened after Generally Muddled took over.

THEIR high-water mark was when they were a division of Chevrolet, rather than the reverse.
 
thats funny opel /astra made car of the year..... they are known to bust timing belts before change interval and bend valves when this happens. if i recall it was under 60,000km.

Keeps the engine reconditioning shops busy with work.

maybe they tested it new and don't count reliability in their decision making.
 
I am a bit bewildered as to what PSA saw in Opel as worth spending 2 billion dollars.
I suppose there is some value to just eliminating competition, but once the blood was in the water, they could have waited a bit longer, and GM might have just shut it down- it has been losing money for 25 years.
GM is actually paying PSA over 3 billion to cover pension costs- along with writing off something like 4 billion more- meaning, on GM's books, this is a 7 billion plus loss.

There is some value in the brand name, I suppose.
I dont think there is much in terms of tech PSA wants- the current Peugot/Citroen cars are pretty modern, and they already have factories and markets pretty much around the world except the USA, which, after all, is only 4% of the world market.
Opel factories are no great prize, I think PSA is getting around 11, including some in Russian and Poland. The german factories are probably the most modern.

I do know that PSA has been doing some joint cars with Opel- might be that getting full control of them is worth it, considering GM is paying them back, today, the cost of the purchase price, and they dont have to pay the pensions lump sum now, but, in the future, in, hopefully, depreciated Euros due to inflation.
So it might just be that its basically a free deal if they structure it right, and manage to lay off some of the pension obligations on national governments as they shut down excess capacity.
 
thanks for the insight.

all i can see is them converting plants to make their cars, i think renault is the strongest euro maker with fingers in a lot of pies,(trucks / cars ) so to speak

maybe they think they can compete on numbers having more plants to make items. still have to get people to buy them though.
 
Renault is not part of PSA- Renault is allied with Nissan, and is a competing worldwide automaker.

PSA is Peugeot and Citroen, mainly- but they have joint ventures in China, Russia, and the Czech republic, and with Fiat and Toyota and Mitsubishi.
 








 
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