Quote:
Originally Posted by Easy Go
Opel has never made a profit over any meaningful period of time. It's incredibly expensive to conduct ANY business in Western Europe and like I said - Europe is already saturated and over capacity.
So bring the handful of Opel/Saab engineers worth keeping to North America (Opel outsources a huge share of their engineering) and then see if there's a business case to keeping Opel merely as a channel for selling other GM vehicles in Europe. If not... bye bye. Let Merkel and the unions sit around and blame each other for their labor troubles once GM is no longer there to point the finger at.
I would rather see Opel shut down than have GM's technology shared with Magna and Putin, Inc. only to be used against GM competitively. I'm glad the board finally saw the light of day there.
Please don't get me wrong - I'm not against all of Opel/Saab. I just think there is so little of it worth hanging onto that it very well may not be worth the trouble to keep afloat.
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But every GM brand outsources a lot of engineering. Take Chevrolet for example. 4/6 cars they sell in America had much of the platform work done overseas. The Malibu, Cobalt and Ecotec engines were engineered by Opel. The Aveo and upcoming Cruze by Daewoo. The Camaro by Holden. Trucks and crossovers are a different matter, but condeming Opel because they outsource ignores the fact that GM is a global company and has learned that duplicating engineering efforts around the world is a pointless and wasteful endeavour.
Tech wise ... I understand the reluctance towards the Russians, but Magna is mainly a Canadian parts supplier. They even build vehicles for BWM, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, and yes GM (incidentally, its a Saab ... originally engineered by Opel).