GM can't seem to decide how to further differentiate Chevrolet from Opel

Although the naming of the Opel Adam as a Buick has been one of the most curious remarks at the Frankfurt Motor Show, in reality General Motors has more pressing priorities in Europe. Sales still fail to show the figures needed for its division to recover on our continent. Not even Chevrolet, which caused fewer headaches than Opel, has escaped a 22% drop across the EU and EFTA in August.

One of the solutions being worked out at the top of GM is a better-suited positioning for both brands. Although the group’s initial intention was to gradually raise the level of Opel to give it a pseudo-premium feel, the situation has not improved so far. Chevrolet still encroaches on the German brand’s territory at certain points in its range. The problem is that General Motors’ executives disagree on how serious the situation is.

The president and general manager of Chevrolet Europe, Thomas Sedran, sees no signs of a worrying overlap in Opel’s products. According to the manufacturer’s research, only between 5 and 12 percent of its buyers had the German brand as one of their top three alternatives. The CEO of Opel, Karl-Thomas Neumann, takes a considerably more negative view.

The German executive does believe both ranges suffer from more overlapping models than they should. The first one that comes to mind, and the one that bothers him most, is the Chevrolet Trax. Its concept differs too little from the Opel Mokka, which costs 2,000 euros more. “The products we want to make in the future should show more and deeper differences than these two,” Neumann told Automotive News in an interview.

GM’s global leadership is pushing for Chevrolet to recover from its slump in Europe, and it is counting on Sedran to accomplish this mission. But the executive from Augsburg has an even harder task, because GM also does not want this increase in Chevrolet sales to harm Opel and send the German brand back into the hole it was in. The dilemmas that have arisen are therefore understandable, although they should not be allowed to linger in the boardrooms for long.

Source: Automotive News