Over the last couple of days, we’ve been tracking an interesting tale about GAZ CEO Bo Andersson, reportedly about to jump ship to another top Russian automaker, AvtoVAZ.
There are earlier reports here and here. Andersson, as you’ll know has strong form in the autobiz. He has been widely acclaimed for turning GAZ around after joining in 2009 from General Motors, where he was global purchasing chief and, as we noted at the time, the first senior executive to leave after that automaker filed for bankruptcy protection.
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Russia was again in the news today as we reported that GM Russia would be integrated into GM Europe – which is actually based in Switzerland, rather than at Opel HQ in Germany, and still where Cadillac Europe staff operate from. I wonder if that location is a hangover from the old GM Continental days which once saw both European Opel and North American Chevrolet GM models assembled at Antwerp (that plant, subsequently Opel’s, is gone now)?
Running GM Russia out of GM Europe seems to make more sense, not least in timezone difference and travel times, than from GM International Operations in Shanghai though it’s interesting to note that Mitsubishi some time back switched its Russian unit – a JV with the local Rolf Group – from reporting to European HQ in the Netherlands to Japan. A more direct rival to GM, Toyota, with plants in England, France, Turkey and Russia, where Sollers is also an assembly contractor, runs its Russian sales and manufacturing units from its European HQ in Belgium.
While we are talking about Russia and China, we have just published some interesting analysis today about how the Chinese one-child policy is affecting auto sales due to a decline of working age people in the population.
We had more analysis of September sales in Europe, including model by model tables, learned about how the body panels on your Volvo might one day also be the batteries and talked PHEVs – current and future – with Porsche.
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By GlobalDataFinally, if you’ve always wondered what a Passion Genome was, let us inform you, courtesy of Nissan’s US unit and their Versa Note launch.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
