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.

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.

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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.