Despite the much-vaunted turnaround plan dubbed Project Olympia, first-quarter figures from GM#;s German arm Opel yesterday showed its problems were intensifying, the newspaper Handelsblatt said.
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Opel sales for the first quarter of 2002 were down 24 percent to 78,000 cars in Germany and, since 1997, the company#;s share of its home market has declined from 18 percent to under 10 percent, the newspaper said.
Things aren#;t much better for Opel Europe-wide, Handelsblatt said, citing Acea (the European association of car makers) statistics that show Opel and Vauxhall sales down 15 percent year-on-year in the first quarter.
GM Europe’s first-quarter operating loss rose from $86 million to $125 million, Handelsblatt said, though GM Europe chief Michael Burns, at the beginning of the year, set a target of halving GM#;s full-year European operating loss to $350 million.
Jürgen Pieper, car analyst at Bankhaus Metzler, told the newspaper that the target would not now be met.
From GM’s European headquarters in Zürich, a company spokesman told Handelsblatt: “There are palpable improvements on the costs side,” and added that sufficient progress would be made for the full-year target still to be met.
But the spokesman told Handelsblatt that it was still by no means certain that a hoped-for revival in the German and European car markets would actually happen – that was the big ‘X#; factor for the company.
