In something of a ‘told you so’ comment, former Magna International executive Siegfried Wolf, who led the global supplier and contract assembler’s failed bid for Opel, has said General Motors’ cost-cutting alliance with PSA Peugeot-Citroen showed it made the wrong call in pulling out of the deal.
Wolf, who now heads GAZ Group, said that, after opting to keep Opel/Vauxhall, GM did not give the European unit the brand the liberty to innovate that automakers in costlier countries need to be successful, Bloomberg News reported.
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“I think still that it wasn’t the right decision on GM’s part,” Wolf said in London. “I’m convinced that if they’d sold it that would have been better for both.”
The move to share development and purchasing costs and eventually build small and mid-size cars together will heighten rivalries between plants currently running at 65%-75% capacity and has worried unions. PSA’s Aulnay plant in France and GM’s Bochum, Germany and Ellesmere Port, England, plants are seen at particular risk.
Wolf reportedly said Opel and Vauxhall would have benefited from more autonomy and an injection of “pride.”
“You see how they struggle, because they weren’t given their own identity,” he told Bloomberg. “The affiliates are still too dependent on the mother house. Being in high-cost countries they need to be given freedom to do more and show some ingenuity.”
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By GlobalDataMagna’s bid which was backed by Russia’s Sberbank, failed after an agreement with GM was scrapped following the appointment of a new board when the automaker entered US bankruptcy protection.
Blomberg noted Wolf still has links to GM. GAZ, controlled by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, last year agreed to produce 30,000 Chevrolet Aveo sedans and hatchbacks annually for GM at its plant in Nizhny Novgorod.
