General Motors Europe’s Opel/Vauxhall operations have already received 30,000 firm orders for the redesigned Astra across Europe, the company claimed on Monday.
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In a statement, GME said it would launch the new compact model, first shown at the Frankfurt motor show last September, on March 19/20 in Germany and Austria, with other countries following later. The Astra will eventually be available in a total of 27 countries in Western and Central Europe.
The GME statement, unsurprisingly, makes no mention of media reports at the end of January that the carmaker was already discounting the new Astra two months before its sales launch.
Automotive News Europe (ANE) reported that GME was offering German Astra buyers an €1,085 discount package on popular options if they ordered a car before the model’s March 19 launch. ANE suggested that the GME move was in response to German market discounts available on the reportedly slow-selling redesigned Volkswagen Golf, launched last October.
Offering such deals on new models, in the Astra’s case before the car was even launched, was highly unusual, the newspaper noted.
“We want to bridge the gap between the Golf and our Astra launch dates,” Opel spokesman Rüdiger Assion told Automotive News at the time.
The paper’s report suggested that loss-making GME, now in full recovery mode, sees the new Astra’s successful launch as crucial. It quoted General Motors Europe president Michael Burns as saying: “2004 will be a watershed year for Golf and Astra in Germany” and added that Burns planned to have half of his organisation concentrating on the Opel/Vauxhall Astra launch.
In its statement on Monday, GME said Opel plans to sell between 450,000 and 500,000 Astras in the first full year once all body-style variants are available. The five-door hatchback version will be followed by a wagon this autumn, a sports three-door hatchback in early 2005 and a convertible later that year.
Adam Opel AG chairman and managing director Carl-Peter Forster said: “We are extremely confident that the new Astra will be a great success. We set very high market expectations for this car, but the order intake to date exceeds even our most optimistic scenario, and this even though the vehicle is not yet in showrooms and we do not accept orders in all countries yet. We’re also very pleased with the positive reception the vehicle has received from industry observers across Europe.”
GME will offer up to five petrol and three diesel engines as well as numerous options, according to market.
The new Astra is expected to follow its popular predecessor and be sold worldwide with Chevrolet and Holden badges as well as Opel and Vauxhall.
The current Holden-badged cabriolet version, for example, is the most popular European convertible model sold in Australia and several thousand have found buyers there to date.
