GM president confirms Holden support

Holden has retained the support of parent company General Motors (GM) following its sale this week of loss-making brands Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group, with GM and Holden insisting the latter's mid-term product plans would not be altered by the deal.

Holden has committed to sourcing about a third of its forthcoming 24 new models from Europe by 2020, hence the GM PSA deal raised serious questions about the company's product line-up going forward.

GM president Dan Ammann spoke at the Geneva motor show overnight and said it was too soon after the announcement of the deal to discuss specifics. He also highlighted the respect many high-ranking GM executives have for Holden.

Included in those ranks are former Holden bosses Alan Batey (now GM North America president), Mark Reuss (now executive vice-president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain), and global design chief Mike Simcoe.

“What I want to emphasise is we are 100 per cent committed to the business in Australia and New Zealand,” he said. “We have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline and it is going to be a really good period of time for the business down there.

He denied GM was contemplating introducing the Chevrolet brand to Australia in place of Holden.

“There are a lot of people inside GM that have a lot of history with Holden. There is nothing we want more than to see the business be successful and prosper down there and we are totally committed to that happening.  

“We have made various decisions in different parts of world for various reasons … but we are absolutely committed to filling the pipeline of product in the way that we are doing right now and the way we are going to do it going forward for business down there.”

There has been speculation on whether Holden would pick up more product from Chevrolet in the US or continue to source cars from PSA-Opel but Mr Ammann said “no specific decisions” had been made. 

“I’d say as a result of yesterday’s announcement, there is more opportunity, not less going forward,” he said.

He would not comment on the composition of Holden's model line-up once the new-generation Opel-sourced models such as the Astra and Insignia-based Commodore were replaced. 

“Clearly the current models that are just launching we will run through their full life cycle and what we do beyond that is yet to be determined,” he said. 

According to Mr Ammann the deal is unlikely to affect the yet-to-be-announced Opel SUV to be built at Rüsselsheim, Germany later this decade. 

“I’d say for the overall Opel-Vauxhall product plan, it will either stay intact or actually expand,” he said. 

The loss of the UK-market Vauxhall brand from GM would not impact RHD model development thanks to GM’s recent focus on engineering new models for both left- and right-hand drive markets.

“As we have been developing the next generation of all of our architectures globally, we have increased, not decreased, the flexibility for right-hand drive and made it a much easier thing to do so we remain totally committed to that,” he said. 

Mr Ammann confirmed that Holden and Opel would continue to use the Astra nameplate. 

He denied GM was contemplating introducing the Chevrolet brand to Australia in place of Holden. 

Joint projects such as electric cars for the Chinese market and GM manufacture of PSA models in Korea are on the agenda for the newly enlarged PSA Group and the slightly trimmer GM. 

According to Mr Ammann, greater economies of scale from the combination of Opel with PSA will make it easier to deal with emissions and other regulatory matters that are rife in Europe.

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