Peugeot-Citroen agrees deal with GM to buy Vauxhall-Opel
Discussion
D-Angle said:
Who makes Vauxhall/Opel vans at the moment? I know they're a shared platform and it's a market that PSA isn't very prominent in.
Luton build low-roof Vivaros, while highroof Opel/Vauxhall-badged and all Nissan/Renault/Fiat-badged versions are built in France. Luton, apparently, can't build highroofs because there isn't enough headroom in the paint shop... <rolls eyes>The Vivaro/Traffic/Primastar's basically been in production 15yrs now, with a couple of facelifts of varying degree - while PSA have the brand new Jumpy/Expert/Toyota ProAce in the same market, on the brand new modular EMP2 platform. There's apparently contracts in place until 2020 to keep manufacture there. Beyond that... Three guesses what'll happen.
PSA buying Opel/Vauxhall has got to be better than GM just killing the brand completely. Reading the German press (they're much more affected than the UK) the word is that PSA will keep the Opel brand for 'people who don't want to buy a French car'. Before you scoff, this marketing spin wizardry is the only reason for the Vauxhall brand existence in 2017.
So going forward the floorpans/mechanicals will be common platforms, and the body on top will either be a Pug, Citroen, DS or Opel. When I use the term Opel, I include Vauxhall, as the only difference will be 7 badges - just like today.
Job losses are more-or-less guaranteed, but probably not until the current model ranges expire.
So going forward the floorpans/mechanicals will be common platforms, and the body on top will either be a Pug, Citroen, DS or Opel. When I use the term Opel, I include Vauxhall, as the only difference will be 7 badges - just like today.
Job losses are more-or-less guaranteed, but probably not until the current model ranges expire.
king arthur said:
It does seem odd to spend 1.9bn on something that hasn't made a profit this century.
Don't know if it is accurate, but Wikimedia says that GM bought Vauxhall in 1925 for £2.5m, which according to an online inflation calculator is £137m in today's moneySo quite a tidy profit
Dale487 said:
And that is exactly part of the problem. In Germany france and Italy they buy there own products because they feel a loyalty to their country and the benefit it provides their economy.
Many brits like you have completely lost that sense of pride in their countries engineering, which is a crying shame. When you work in engineering you realise just how much talent there is still in the UK for engineering.
With respect:-Many brits like you have completely lost that sense of pride in their countries engineering, which is a crying shame. When you work in engineering you realise just how much talent there is still in the UK for engineering.
- NO volume car maker is British-owned anymore, so the profits from buying your Vauxhall / Jaguar / Nissan / etc. go abroad anyway. The last "British" brand in that regard was Rover, and for the last few years there the profits lined the pensions of the Phoenix 4 rather than doing anything useful...and even before that "Vauxhall" and "Ford" weren't British, neither was Jaguar, etc. etc...
- ...so going back before Rover, you effectively have to go back to British Leyland, or the fragmentation thereof, to find another "British" company. Which might give you some idea why we fell out of love in this country with "British" cars...
- The car manufacturers today don't even TRY to tell consumers where their car is built. And in some cases there are dual factories. So how is Joe Consumer supposed to know if he's buying British-built?
- Even a "British-built" car like e.g. a Land Rover has a LOT of componentry imported from overseas. Usually, oddly, high value-add stuff like electronics and seat-trim.
I suppose we could all buy Lotuses (oops, no - foreign-owned again), or Mclarens (ah, yeah, there we go, majority foreign-owned). Or how about a Rolls Royce, that most quintessentially British of brands (what? BMW? Really?!? Oh dear. Bentley too, eh?).
Which leaves us in your world all driving Morgans or Nobles or various track-day specials...which actually sounds really good fun until you realise you've got to get two kids to school on a wet, icy winter's day and then go and get the week's shopping from the supermarket. Or you've got a sales presentation 150 miles away...
(I'm being a little hyperbolic, but my point is that your idealistic, patriotic call isn't exactly practical or meaningful in the real-world and was undone 40 years ago by those collective idiots running and working (sic) for BL.
PSA are just buying the market aren't they? Unless they're going to promote citroen to some higher brand image to compete with Ze Germans and then use Peugeot to plow it's current furrow of selling cars to people who don't like cars and convert Opel/Vauxhall into a lower end market product which some moght argue it already is.
I wouldn't fancy the job of selling Citroens or Peugeots at a premium price point though, tough job anywhere but France.
I wouldn't fancy the job of selling Citroens or Peugeots at a premium price point though, tough job anywhere but France.
boyse7en said:
king arthur said:
It does seem odd to spend 1.9bn on something that hasn't made a profit this century.
Don't know if it is accurate, but Wikimedia says that GM bought Vauxhall in 1925 for £2.5m, which according to an online inflation calculator is £137m in today's moneySo quite a tidy profit
I can't understand why anyone would want to buy a Vauxhall of any sort. Over the last 20 years I've classed the brand as:
Corsas driven by Chavs
Astras driven by Coppers
Zafiras driven by dowdy Mums who never lost their baby weight, or their angry, put-upon husbands who resent having so many children and tend to get a bit road-ragey despite driving one of the least cool cars on the road.
We did have an Insignia as a rental car in Spain last year and to its credit I actually found it very pleasant to drive and eminently capable as a family saloon. I'd never dream of walking into a Vauxhall showroom though, the brand screams out to me "people I do not want to be like".
Does Ellesmere Port still boast 'The Home Of The Astra' on the factory wall? I do fear for people in that part of the world who voted Brexit and 9 months later see one of the region's largest employers bought by the French. It surely won't bode well for them long-term, will it? I'd be amazed if this wasn't the going the same way as Rover and Longbridge.
havoc said:
Dale487 said:
And that is exactly part of the problem. In Germany france and Italy they buy there own products because they feel a loyalty to their country and the benefit it provides their economy.
Many brits like you have completely lost that sense of pride in their countries engineering, which is a crying shame. When you work in engineering you realise just how much talent there is still in the UK for engineering.
With respect:-Many brits like you have completely lost that sense of pride in their countries engineering, which is a crying shame. When you work in engineering you realise just how much talent there is still in the UK for engineering.
- NO volume car maker is British-owned anymore, so the profits from buying your Vauxhall / Jaguar / Nissan / etc. go abroad anyway. The last "British" brand in that regard was Rover, and for the last few years there the profits lined the pensions of the Phoenix 4 rather than doing anything useful...and even before that "Vauxhall" and "Ford" weren't British, neither was Jaguar, etc. etc...
- ...so going back before Rover, you effectively have to go back to British Leyland, or the fragmentation thereof, to find another "British" company. Which might give you some idea why we fell out of love in this country with "British" cars...
- The car manufacturers today don't even TRY to tell consumers where their car is built. And in some cases there are dual factories. So how is Joe Consumer supposed to know if he's buying British-built?
- Even a "British-built" car like e.g. a Land Rover has a LOT of componentry imported from overseas. Usually, oddly, high value-add stuff like electronics and seat-trim.
I suppose we could all buy Lotuses (oops, no - foreign-owned again), or Mclarens (ah, yeah, there we go, majority foreign-owned). Or how about a Rolls Royce, that most quintessentially British of brands (what? BMW? Really?!? Oh dear. Bentley too, eh?).
Which leaves us in your world all driving Morgans or Nobles or various track-day specials...which actually sounds really good fun until you realise you've got to get two kids to school on a wet, icy winter's day and then go and get the week's shopping from the supermarket. Or you've got a sales presentation 150 miles away...
(I'm being a little hyperbolic, but my point is that your idealistic, patriotic call isn't exactly practical or meaningful in the real-world and was undone 40 years ago by those collective idiots running and working (sic) for BL.
PurpleTurtle said:
Does Ellesmere Port still boast 'The Home Of The Astra' on the factory wall? I do fear for people in that part of the world who voted Brexit and 9 months later see one of the region's largest employers bought by the French. It surely won't bode well for them long-term, will it? I'd be amazed if this wasn't the going the same way as Rover and Longbridge.
Except for the minor detail that Ellesmere Port was already part of an autonomous German wing of a US corporation.Rover was always British-owned (except for the brief BMW era).
MarshPhantom said:
I couldn't really care less where the profits go. The lost jobs are the problem.
Automation's removed FAR more jobs than moving factories around.The Ellesmere Port factory employed 12,000 people in 1975 - there are now 2,200. Annual production averaged 100,000 cars across the plant's 50yr life - it's now nearly twice that...
havoc said:
(I'm being a little hyperbolic, but my point is that your idealistic, patriotic call isn't exactly practical or meaningful in the real-world and was undone 40 years ago by those collective idiots running and working (sic) for BL.
Whilst I generally accept that things were bad at BL in the 1970s, to suggest that everyone there was an idiot is not something I can let pass. My father was an engineer working for BL at that time (not on the design side I hasten to add - the products of the Allegro/Princess/TR7 era were dreadful, and that's one of several reasons Japan & Germany came in and stole their market from under their nose). However, he and many of his white-collar colleagues refused to go on strike, because they could see the futility of it. They were striving to modernise the product. When you say 'the people working for' it paints everyone with the same brush, I was there and it was not entirely like that. I think you probably need to qualify that as the Red Robbo's of this world - but be clear that not everyone at BL supported Robinson.
BL was handicapped by poor products, but an utterly intrangible communist-led Union which refused to modernise when all of its competitors were doing so would be a more accurate summary.
Edited by PurpleTurtle on Monday 6th March 16:01
Truckosaurus said:
MarshPhantom said:
I couldn't really care less where the profits go....
Indeed. By similar logic to suggests Land Rover is Indian and Lotus Malaysian, you can claim that Ferrari is British as FCA is Headquartered in London.Isn't Nissan one of the most "popular" plants in the UK. Obviously Japanese. Karasu no gyozui!
TooMany2cvs said:
PurpleTurtle said:
Does Ellesmere Port still boast 'The Home Of The Astra' on the factory wall? I do fear for people in that part of the world who voted Brexit and 9 months later see one of the region's largest employers bought by the French. It surely won't bode well for them long-term, will it? I'd be amazed if this wasn't the going the same way as Rover and Longbridge.
Except for the minor detail that Ellesmere Port was already part of an autonomous German wing of a US corporation.Funny things those Global Corporations. Like Ford, taking a nice fat European Investment Bank loan to build its Transit factory in Turkey, directly leading to the closure of Southmapton Transit plant. PSA will never consider such a thing with Ellsemere Port, I'm sure.
PurpleTurtle said:
Fair stuff.
You're right - I never intended to tar everyone with the same brush.I HAVE come across a number of shop-floor employees from that era, however (particularly at Solihull), and they almost never cease to disappoint me...I suspect it's little different in France now, with the main change being a perpetually-patriotic customer base and a government that is still quite happy to dip its' hand in the taxpayers' pockets...
havoc said:
You're right - I never intended to tar everyone with the same brush.
I HAVE come across a number of shop-floor employees from that era, however (particularly at Solihull), and they almost never cease to disappoint me...I suspect it's little different in France now, with the main change being a perpetually-patriotic customer base and a government that is still quite happy to dip its' hand in the taxpayers' pockets...
And drive demand through state controlled buyers. e.g. La Poste - just how do they get around EU procurement rules..?I HAVE come across a number of shop-floor employees from that era, however (particularly at Solihull), and they almost never cease to disappoint me...I suspect it's little different in France now, with the main change being a perpetually-patriotic customer base and a government that is still quite happy to dip its' hand in the taxpayers' pockets...
PurpleTurtle said:
TooMany2cvs said:
PurpleTurtle said:
Does Ellesmere Port still boast 'The Home Of The Astra' on the factory wall? I do fear for people in that part of the world who voted Brexit and 9 months later see one of the region's largest employers bought by the French. It surely won't bode well for them long-term, will it? I'd be amazed if this wasn't the going the same way as Rover and Longbridge.
Except for the minor detail that Ellesmere Port was already part of an autonomous German wing of a US corporation.king arthur said:
It does seem odd to spend 1.9bn on something that hasn't made a profit this century.
Be careful how you measure profit. During the Saab saga (which IIRC was part of GM worldwide and not GM Europe) it was clear that Saab was saddled with a lot of costs not related to Saab cars...It has been politically expedient for GM (US) to be profitable if possible for the last few years post bail-out. Being "dragged down" by European subsidiaries has been a convenient spin.
My best guess: GM has done as much soaking-up of costs in Europe as it can, and lacks the cash to invest in new platforms.
TooMany2cvs said:
D-Angle said:
Who makes Vauxhall/Opel vans at the moment? I know they're a shared platform and it's a market that PSA isn't very prominent in.
Luton build low-roof Vivaros, while highroof Opel/Vauxhall-badged and all Nissan/Renault/Fiat-badged versions are built in France. Luton, apparently, can't build highroofs because there isn't enough headroom in the paint shop... <rolls eyes>The Vivaro/Traffic/Primastar's basically been in production 15yrs now, with a couple of facelifts of varying degree - while PSA have the brand new Jumpy/Expert/Toyota ProAce in the same market, on the brand new modular EMP2 platform. There's apparently contracts in place until 2020 to keep manufacture there. Beyond that... Three guesses what'll happen.
Hub said:
I don't know the full details, but it seems an odd takeover - just taking out a competitor really rather than adding something they don't already have or a hugely valuable brand.
Odd for GM too - surely you need a global platform, and now they have nothing in Europe (Chevrolet and Saab also gone).
I was wondering about this too. I don't really see what's in it for either brand. Peugeot don't reach much beyond Europe's borders and nor do VX/Opel so they are not buying geographical share and the brands don't exactly complement each other in the way that say, Jaguar and Landrover do. Odd for GM too - surely you need a global platform, and now they have nothing in Europe (Chevrolet and Saab also gone).
For GM they are effectively vacating Europe wholesale as they don't have any brands that sell in numbers here so will effectively cease to be a global player.
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