How can General Motos, especially under the amidst of all the economic gloom and doom being reported from all forms of media, possibly have sold a record number of cars in Europe for the first quarter? With the help of its newly launched Chevrolet brand and a little subcompact called the Aveo!
Yes, we are talking about the same Aveo that joins the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla as many a teen's first time vehicle. While the majority of the 554,000 sales GM made in Europe were from Opel, the biggest growth came from the newly launched budget Chevy brand.
You see, the Chevy lineup for Europeans is not the same as the one we have here. It is mainly re-engineered and rebadged budget Korean built compacts like the Aveo. The brand is seeing the majority of its growth in Eastern Europe and Russia, where brand snobbery is not as rife as in Western Europe or America. Most people in those countries are used to Ladas built during the Cold War, so most anything for them would be a huge step up. (Give them a few more years.)
GM also sells select Cadillacs, HUMMERs, and -- gasp! -- Corvettes in a separate, more upscale dealership group. While that group of vehicles hasn’t really ever connected that well with European buyers, Cadillac did experience an 11% sales gain in the same first quarter. We would assume that is attributable to the fine new CTS model.
On the negative side, Corvette and HUMMER sales were both down during the same period. We cannot imagine how any European would want a HUMMER H2 what with the price of gas across the pond! And the all-American Corvette is also much too wide for most small European roads. Just to get an idea, it pretty much takes up the space of two Peugeot hatchbacks.
So what other reason can there be for GM’s continued good fortune in Europe? The last thing we can think of is that Europe, and the United Kingdom in particular, hasn’t seen anywhere near the level of economic downturn as in the United States. Just by looking at history, one can see that the European economy usually follows the same pattern as that in the U.S. but with a 6 month to a year delay.
Our take? Let’s just hope GM saves the money it makes in these other booming markets. It may be a while before the worldwide economy heats up again.