According to a report in Automotive News, GM has announced that its Opel division will build a Buick model for the American market at its facility in Rüsselsheim, Germany. Production of the yet-unnamed Buick is set to begin in the second half of the decade. Opel has earmarked $336.62 million for the expansion to build a new model, and will reportedly announce details before the end of the year.
GM's been on a quest to cut costs and return Opel to profitability, so the announcement doesn't come as a shock. The decision to build Buicks for export in Germany (although curious due to Germany's sky-high labor costs) will help optimize GM's global manufacturing capacity utilization, and possibly play into the manufacturer's attempt to more closely align the Buick and Opel product development teams. While details regarding the model in question are unclear, Opel is expected to begin producing the Zafira Tourer minivan at Rüsselsheim in 2015, and the production of a Buick version is not out of the question. Opel also revealed that its supervisory board had given the go ahead for future production of an additional variant of its mid-sized Insignia sedan, which shares the same underpinnings as the Buick Regal (now being assembled in Ontario, Canada). Adding to the speculation, supplier sources told Automotive News that the next-generation Adam minicar, due in late 2018, is being designed and engineered for sale in the United States and possibly in China. So while we'll have to wait for the official announcement, it's clear that the relationship between two brands is stronger than ever.
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Opel also said that it would end exports to China under the Opel nameplate in January of 2015. Despite their shared roots, Buick heartily outsold Opel in China last year, moving 810,000 units to Opel's 4365, as reported by Automotive News. "This is a long overdue decision," Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann said in the statement. "It would have cost hundreds of millions of euros to raise awareness of the Opel brand [in China] and to expand the distribution network."
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