International sales of General Motors’ Chevrolet nameplate will overtake those in the home US market over the next couple of years, according to a top executive.
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Burgeoning demand from the BRIC emerging economies as well as Europe will overturn decades of history in which Chevrolet was solely an archetypal blue collar American nameplate.
“By 2015 we expect more than 60% of Chevrolet’s sales to come from General Motors Internationl Operations (GMIO). Last year it was 42%. We’re setting new sales records around the world,” said Tim Lee, GM’s recently-appointed GMIO head.
Brazil is the main driving force of Chevrolet’s shift towards dominating international sales. Last year Chevy recorded 595,500 registrations in Brazil and just over 332,000 sales were made in China.
Together these two major BRIC countries contributed 27% of global Chevy sales, Lee said.
Lee, formerly GM’s manufacturing boss, took over GMIO last month, replacing Briton Nick Reilly who returned to Europe to run Opel/Vauxhall.
Chevy’s sales in China will get a further boost this week when the new Sail compact sedan is unveiled.
A re-skin of today’s Sail, it shares it underpinnings with the GM do Brasil Celta/Corsa hatchback family, itself a rework of the mid-90s Opel Corsa platform.
At Detroit, GM will preview another important new model for the US and European markets, the new Aveo sub-compact.
Based on GM’s Korean-developed global Gamma 2 platform, the new Aveo will go on sale in the US late this year and in Europe in 2011.
Together with a raft of other new models, including the Orlando compact minivan, and Cruze hatchback and estate, the Aveo will spearhead a near-doubling of Chevy’s European sales to around 1m units by 2015, according to Chevy Europe boss Wayne Brannon.
