More Sad News for GM Fans; General Motors pulls away from Opel

Now that official word has come down that General Motors is abandoning its Saab and Saturn brands, the company announced today that it will also spin off a quarter to half of its stake in its European brand Opel (and it’s British twin, Vauxhall). Opel is a prominent car brand in Europe, and one of the largest carmakers in Germany.

Ironically, until the current financial crisis hit, Opel was one of GM’s more successful operations and it helped support the money-losing North American factories. As recently as a year ago, the automotive giant was pinning its hopes on better integrating its worldwide operations, and selling Opel-designed products in the United States, such as the Saturn Astra. Now that plan may be off the table.

In the meantime, Saturn has asked its dealers for two more months to develop a plan to restructure and look for investors and suppliers as an independent company, once GM quits providing cars for it in 2012. In the end, there’s no reason an independent Opel couldn’t be the manufacturer to build cars for Saturn. We’re just saying…

Source;
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/02/gm-pulls-away-from-opel.html