Opel/Vauxhall sold to Magna/Sperbank

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GM must have seen the steady inroads that Kia and Hyundai have made in Europe.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Kia and Hyundai have invested heavily in automated assembly lines. This ensures that most of their cars meet the required quality standard.

But when you look at SAIC for example, their assembly lines rely more of manual assembly. This gives greater variation in the final quality and raises the risk of 'Friday afternoon' cars being sold to customers.

So which route will Volga be taking I wonder?
 
Without any manufacturing capacity we can't do the green stuff either.

Look at the wind turbine factory that shut on the IOW at a time when our government is planning to spend (yet more borrowed cash) billions on wind turbines.

No other country would do this, other counties must laugh at us.

I agree. My parents used to live on the IoW so followed this story closely. It's a joke that policy statements are made endorsing green technologies whilst in the background innovative green companies go under.

Smoke and mirrors!......or should that be.....wind and solar panels. :)

edit: I believe that new companies are starting up in the UK to design carbon fibre wind turbine blades, which are more technically complex that glass fibre ones. So I'll wait and see how successful those companies are.
 
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Chevrolet (Deawoo) are extremely popular in Russia, where badge snobbery still is not that important with the masses of Lada buyers! Some people don't even realise what Chevrolets really are, they just see them as very affordable cars (too bad for the "real" ones, such as Camaro and Corvette! - maybe that's why Corvette has become a brand in it's own right now!). I think GM have a real cash cow there and as Nick says, Opel/Vauxhall going down will just remove some competition. Makes me wonder how far back this was planned? The Deawoo rebranding happened a few years back didn't it? 2004-ish? Hmmm...
 
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Kia and Hyundai have invested heavily in automated assembly lines. This ensures that most of their cars meet the required quality standard.

But when you look at SAIC for example, their assembly lines rely more of manual assembly. This gives greater variation in the final quality and raises the risk of 'Friday afternoon' cars being sold to customers.

So which route will Volga be taking I wonder?

Volga will be hoping to dominate the Russian market with Russian assembled Astras and Insignias, word of them just getting the older models to play with is nonsense, for very little cash or risk they've just got themselves a full line up of bang upto date cars to assemble.

They even have a newly built (built by Magna) factory to use.

So Volga get instant sales and new models, the Germans get their rustbelt factories working for a few more years, and we English get 35000 more people on the dole.

But what do Magna get?

Will other car makers want to still designs with a direct competitor?

Have Magna got the money to do anything more than make componsnts and contract build low volume cars?

The Russians will be counting on Magna to have bitten off too much and bail on Opel, the German tax payers to get sick of propping up usless German factories etc.

Only spanner in the works is that most Vauxhalls/Opels use Fiat engines, so will Fiat still play ball?
 
I agree. My parents used to live on the IoW so followed this story closely. It's a joke that policy statements are made endorsing green technologies whilst in the background innovative green companies go under.

Smoke and mirrors!......or should that be.....wind and solar panels. :)

edit: I believe that new companies are starting up in the UK to design carbon fibre wind turbine blades, which are more technically complex that glass fibre ones. So I'll wait and see how successful those companies are.

Too little too late, but hopefully I'll be proved wrong.
 
Nimbys?

A few salient facts about the IoW closure. First the company Vestas is Danish,second they are moving production to the USA, hardly the third world? and third quoting Ditlev Engel, the CEO of Vestas
Engel urged a review in the country's planning laws, which he said were hampering the development of wind energy. "In the UK, there is a clear division between what the government would like to see happening and what certain local politicians want to see happening, or rather not want to see happening ... there is not necessarily the same ambition levels," he said, adding the government needed to invest in the electricity transmission grid to make it more friendly to wind energy.

It would appear that a major factor in the implementation of both wind and nuclear power is the huge inertia of the planning process at local level.-the "nimby effect" Understandably nobody wants a wind farm or nuclear power station on their doorstep but if the government steps in to expedite matters they are instantly accused of heavy handed "centralist" control by their political opponents. How do you square a circle.:wallbash:
 
I must confess that I too would not like to have a nuclear power station in my back yard, but living in the Midlands, that's never going to happen anyway. Even if I did live on the coast next to one I doubt I'd ever swim in the nearby sea. So that sums up my attitude towards that industry.

But on the other hand I would have no problem with having a wind farm near me. Furthermore I find them beautiful and elegant so would enjoy looking at one. But I expect that I'm in the minority.
 
Nope, I like them too! We have a couple near where I live, along the M25, and they always look peaceful and calming, to me!
 
Do the economics support shipping cars all the way from Russia in the volumes that Vauxhall currently sell, or would it be more likely that they'll CKD them and do final assembly here?
 
I must confess that I too would not like to have a nuclear power station in my back yard, but living in the Midlands, that's never going to happen anyway. Even if I did live on the coast next to one I doubt I'd ever swim in the nearby sea. So that sums up my attitude towards that industry.

But on the other hand I would have no problem with having a wind farm near me. Furthermore I find them beautiful and elegant so would enjoy looking at one. But I expect that I'm in the minority.

A bit OT but I'd take the nuclear power station everytime, why would you not swim in the sea? The water that goes back in is actually cleaner than when it came out and theres no radioactivity at all. I have worked on the water treatment side of these power stations dont have a problem with them at all. If you look at cancer clusters in the UK there are more around coal fired power stations than nuclear but theres another reason for that.

My mates house backs onto a windfarm, you want to hear the noise from those things it is absolutely horrendous and to me they are just a blot on the landscape, its devalued his house by thousands. Its also a technology that will never work efficiently in the UK as the window of operation is just too narrow, offshore ones yes the ones on land just more "greenwash"
 
A bit OT but I'd take the nuclear power station everytime, why would you not swim in the sea? The water that goes back in is actually cleaner than when it came out and theres no radioactivity at all.

I don't pretend to know all the facts but stories like this concern me:
Sizewell nuclear disaster averted by dirty laundry, says official report | Environment | guardian.co.uk

If a wind turbine fails, it may injure livestock or in extreme circumstances kill someone, but never on the scale that nuclear can. Also once the technology is redundant it can quickly be decomissioned. The legacy of the nuclear industry baffles me.

I don't see wind power as a single solution but just as one element of energy generation, including a diminishing dependence on fossil fuels.
 
A bit OT but I'd take the nuclear power station everytime, why would you not swim in the sea? The water that goes back in is actually cleaner than when it came out and theres no radioactivity at all. I have worked on the water treatment side of these power stations dont have a problem with them at all. If you look at cancer clusters in the UK there are more around coal fired power stations than nuclear but theres another reason for that.

My mates house backs onto a windfarm, you want to hear the noise from those things it is absolutely horrendous and to me they are just a blot on the landscape, its devalued his house by thousands. Its also a technology that will never work efficiently in the UK as the window of operation is just too narrow, offshore ones yes the ones on land just more "greenwash"



I watched THIS posted on here a few weeks back.

A clever guy and 90 years old to boot.
 
Is there not a letter "m" missing from the last word in the thread title? :dk:
 
From our Foreign Correspondent.

I' m afraid the thread has now drifted a bit from the topic raised by the original poster for which I feel partly responsible.:eek: No offence meant as I always enjoy the contributions from the forum's "man behind the iron curtain" :cool:
 
Being a bit of a Vauxhall fan (a blade? ;)) I think it's a great shame and more than likely does mean that Vauxhall will finally fall on its sword, despite allegedly being profitable.

I completely agree about the lack of R&D over here meaning we have a limited capacity to do anything anyway without reliance on European components, but I have a feeling that Vauxhall / Opel cars built in Russia will be judged on their merits, if they're rusty (no MB pun intended) after a few years they will stop being bought new. I think a lot of people still like to buy British, which along with what really are good strong products and a rare thing now, a good British brand have probably done much to keep Vauxhall afloat over here and keep the Opel brand at bay. Would the acquisition of GM Europe be profitable to Volga if the Europeans decided they didn't want to buy their cars from Russia?

Interestingly the reference to SAIC earlier in this thread reminded me of MG-Rover's demise. There, SAIC and Nanjing bought parts of the former Rover assets, one getting the production line and the other getting the brand and rights to use the design or something silly. They later had to join forces to get anywhere and iirc kept delaying the relaunch of the MGTF, which was still to be built at Longbridge (albeit only assembled from Chinese made components). The Chinese bought something they didn't already have - the tooling to make a Euro-4 class engine and (iirc) a highly automated production line. In their case, they stripped Longbridge and took the tooling back to China to build 'British cars' over there for their own home market. The way it was described was that when a Chinese man becomes successful and wealthy, he aspires to own British products, including cars. Strangely we all go German. So the aquisition of Rover, plus all the old historic brands previously swept up into Austin-Rover

When you look through the hundreds of photos of Longbridge as it was ripped apart, you get the scale of the loss, not just in terms of jobs (that alone is horrific) but in terms of the infrastructure and capacity that will NEVER be replaced, simply because it was added to iteratively over the years whilst already building something saleable.

Locked away in my garage I've got a 1947 Vauxhall 10 - quite an innovative car really and one that had it's production run paused during WW2 to allow the Luton factory to build Churchill tanks. The tanks weren't that much cop I suppose (unreliable) but we as a country had the capacity to do it.

I'll be watching like many others to see what happens over the next weeks, months and years but perhaps it's just a matter of time now. Maybe I should go out and buy a new Vauxhall now while they're still being built properly, albeit the Astra (including the Mk6) is the only GME car being built in Blighty. :)

Ian.
 
Always had a soft spot for Vauxhall since my Dad had a Victor in the 60s and I used to hold the wheel and pretend to drive (it had a bench front seat)! Had an Opel Manta when I was about 20 so have a nostalgic feel for them too! Sad to think these two historic makes could end up the way of TVR, Rover and LDV... I think Saab had a lucky escape!!!
 
I too am a Vauxhall fan. Owned numerous, and all were both reliable and great to drive.
 

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