When I came back from Barcelona this morning and was approaching Frankfurt Airport, I was able to convince myself - Rüsselsheim is still standing. Only the number of champagne corks on the streets around the Opel headquarters had grown to an impressive number. Party time for Opel. GM has an understanding.
Bye Chevrolet!
Badge engineering and price war on the back of the traditional brand Opel 2015 are terminated. Then the big mother of Chevrolet and Opel pulls the plug from the low-budget experiment for Europe and reflects on the values of the company. And these do not seem to be in the range of simple Opel copies with price advantage.
Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro stay
It was always the main point of criticism of the Chevrolet commitment, because for the Europeans, Chevrolet is primarily an original American brand and not a label for ex-Korea small cars or badge engineering. GM will make exactly this separation for the market in Europe in the future. Traditional models like the Corvette or the Camaro will continue to find their way to Europe and will be officially marketed as Chevrolet. In the market for small, simpler and, above all, volume models, the traditional Opel brand offers greater opportunities for the future.
The next step will be a stronger involvement of Cadillac in Europe. The GM can also be premium, I have in my Driving Report to the Cadillac ATS already written down. Here, the US group wants to risk the attack on the German premium manufacturers.
Only at least will be sad about the departure of the “cheap Opel” with the big US name. I definitely don't. So I'm looking forward to the Cadillac brand!
And for Opel. Because I could never understand the politics of GM. Now Opel has a real future!