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GM will maintain global product strategy even if it loses control of engineering centers

 
2 2,175 views Apr 2, 2009

The Insignia was developed primarily by Opel and has been engineered for Europe, China and the U.S.

The Insignia was developed primarily by Opel and has been engineered for Europe, China and the U.S.

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Becoming efficient is GM's key goal right now, both in bringing back its own financial security and at the same time convincing the auto industry task force to provide crucial loans.

To achieve this goal, GM will be trying to preserve its global product strategy that helps it reduce costs for model development by creating cars for global markets rather than specific regions. This task may become more difficult over the next few months, especially considering the state of GM's Opel subsidiary based in Germany and its own financial troubles.

Speaking with The Detroit News, GM's new CEO, Fritz Henderson, has stated that maintaining global vehicle development is necessary for survival. "If Opel were developing an Opel Insignia only for Opel, it's 150,000 units. If we develop an Insignia for across the globe, it's a million units - a much more efficient way to do it."

But problems may crop up where GM is requesting financial help from third-parties in exchange for equity stakes in their brands - as is the case with the German government and Opel. If the German government were to claim control of Opel with a majority shareholding of stocks, it remains uncertain who would be in charge of running the company, especially in regards to GM's global development plans. The same could occur for its Holden and Daewoo subsidiaries.

While this is a heavy concern for the carmaker, streamlining may mean having to give up some of its brands - if not Opel, then perhaps one of its core American brands such as Pontiac, which may become too low-volume to justify.



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Comments (2)

  1. ma_54chevyman avatar 54chevyman Posted: 4/2/2009 6:29am PDT

    The US Government if effect bailed out foreign banks so why not bail out GM's Opel?!? GM is not going to file bankruptcy and still come out lean and mean, nice bluff Obama! Keep your hard earned global assets in place GM, unless the German Government tries to over tax them to force your hand. Opel, Daewoo and Holden are critical to the development of American's global cars. Daewoo has not shown it to the extent the Opel and Holden have, but keep these assets in place Obama! This is Americas chance to keep it's competitive edge while loosing it's hefty US labor costs!!!!!!!
     
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  2. ma_Chris avatar Chris Posted: 4/2/2009 7:52am PDT

    54chev, i dont think obama means lean and mean in the sense of the size of the portfolio of the companies but of the staffing. even in the 90's when ford had more market share than GM, GM still had 2 or 3 times as many white collar employees. THAT is something that had to change and they started streamlining design and operations, but not nearly quick enough apparently.

    this is all moot. really. i forget the details of how it works but ford has two types of shares; the publicly traded shares that show how much of the company you own, and another type of share that shows how much of the company you control. this is the same system that allows the Ford family to own about 5% of the company but still control 30% of it.

    sell 80% of the company to the german government,. they'll reap 80% of the profits,.. however, they only receive 30% of the board or something like that.
     
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