SOUTH KOREA: GM Daewoo & Technology will launch its first SUV in South Korea early next year with US and European roll-outs following later.
President and CEO Nick Reilly told just-auto the automaker is also preparing for the April launch of its new large luxury sedan, which essentially will be a Daewoo-badged Holden Statesman.
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“It will be imported initially from Australia, but it will be assembled here in Korea later,” Reilly said. “We hope to sell 3,000 to 4,000 units of the Statesman this year.”
GM Daewoo hopes the new SUV and large sedan will help the Daewoo brand take a bigger slice of the Korean new vehicle market from rival Hyundai Motor which, with its affiliate Kia Motors, currently accounts for over 70%.
“It will be completely a new vehicle that doesn’t look like any other vehicle in the world today,” Reilly said in an exclusive interview with just-auto during a media visit to the automaker’s Bupyong plant near Seoul.
“In the US, of course, GM already has a lot of SUVs, but it is quite possible that derivatives of [the new Daewoo SUV] will [go] to the US eventually, and that it will be manufactured in the US.”
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By GlobalDataGM’s US brands Chevrolet and Suzuki already sell several rebadged GM-Daewoo car lines in both the US and Canada – the subcompact Kalos, as the Chevrolet Aveo, currently leads its US market segment.
Reilly said the new SUV will be based on the GM’s Theta platform.
Last September, at the Paris auto show, GM Daewoo showed off ‘concepts’ of the SUV, the S3X, and its fully redesigned Matiz mini car.
The production SUV has 2.4- and 3.2 litre petrol engines and a two-litre turbodiesel, said Reilly, who has led GM Daewoo since October 2002 when the company was formed from the ashes of the bankrupt Daewoo Motors.
“2005 will mark the beginning of the new GM Daewoo’s first major product offensive,” Reilly added. “It will begin with the launch of the all new Matiz (a redesign of the tiny subcomapct city car), followed quickly by the launch of the Statesman.” The new SUV follows sometime in early 2006.
Reilly said: “In all, we will launch five new products this year and over the course of the next 15 months, nine new products.”
Ki-Joon Yu, vice president in charge of GM Daewoo’s Technical Centre, said that the automaker is working on derivatives of the new SUV for GM.
“GM Daewoo is now developing derivatives that will be sold in the US and Europe,” he told just-auto. “We hope to launch these derivatives in early 2007.”
Although the SUV will be sold with seven seats in South Korea, the US and European derivatives will have just five seats, Yu said.
“In the US the SUV will be sold under one of GM’s brand names and it will be sold in Europe [as an Opel],” he added.
Although Yu did not confirm it, it is likely the model would be badged as a Vauxhall in the UK, following current GM Europe badging policy.
GME has just launched a range of re-badged Daewoo car model lines across Europe, dumping the Daewoo brand in favour of a huge boost for the Chevrolet nameplate, which is virtually unknown to most continental car buyers.
Noting that GM Daewoo is sharing a lot of engineering development work with General Motors, including the next-generation Theta platform, Reilly said: “We are doing work for them, so I think GM engineering people in the US are very impressed about what can be done here.”
Reilly has hired more than 700 new engineers since he took office.
Reilly said GM Daewoo hopes to produce and sell about 1.1 million cars inside and outside South Korea this year, up from 900,000 units last year.
However, he predicted that GM Daewoo won’t see a strong improvement in home market sales this year because of weak demand stemming from a prolonged economic slow-down.
Local sales are expected to only reach 120,000 units this year, up from last year’s 100,000-plus, he added.
Peter Chang
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