Some low-price market slots presently covered by European-built General Motors cars could be replaced with Daewoos now that GM owns the company, according to Opel chairman Carl-Peter Forster.
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In an intriguing aside around Detroit show time, Forster told The Car Connection website (TCC) that his division may have “overstretched” itself trying to cover the entire range of the European market, so it may now move to have “some price positions we cover…picked up by Daewoo.”
TCC said that was especially likely to happen in the more budget-conscious markets in southern Europe.
TCC said that Daewoo, now in the GM family, wants to more than double its European volume, to about 340,000 vehicles annually, and Forster suggested as many as 50,000 of those units could be “cannibalised” from Opel.
But because those are low-price, low-margin product lines, the impact on the German maker’s profits would be minimal, TCC said.
