According to this item from the BBC,
General Motors has signed up to a 2bn yuan ($293m; £180m) joint venture with the Chinese state-owned carmaker FAW to make light trucks and vans.
The vehicles will initially be sold in China under the FAW brand, but could in future be exported under the GM brand.
They will be produced at existing FAW facilities in the cities of Changchun and Harbin.
GM sold 818,442 vehicles in China in the first six months of 2009, compared with 1,094,561 in the whole of 2008.
Demand was particularly strong for its minivans and other small vehicles.
"For us in China, this is an important complement to the rest of our portfolio," said Kevin Wale, managing director of GM’s Chinese operations.
"We are well established in passenger vehicles and mini commercial vehicles and we haven’t had a presence in the truck segment."
GM makes Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles in a joint venture with Chinese manufacturer SAIC Motor Corp.
In John Peter’s Dec. 2004 article, "A new domestic policy: GM gears up to be a major player in what will someday be the world’s largest auto market" GM’s future is already staked out:
Phil Murtaugh, chairman and CEO, GM China Group, says that one word can be used to characterize China’s automotive industry over the past few years. That word is "growth."
2003 saw vehicle sales growing by 36 percent or about 4.56 million units. That followed a year in which sales grew by 40 percent.
China has now passed Germany as the world’s third largest vehicle market and could pass the U.S. by 2025, becoming the world’s largest car market.
"What I think is most impressive," Murtaugh says, "is the tact that sales of domestically built passenger cars have risen 80 percent and 60 percent over the past two years, respectively."
[...]
The company expects to double its vehicle assembly capacity from 650,000 to 1.3 million units by 2007.
While Murtaugh says that GM will continue to leverage its global portfolio to bring new vehicles to the Chinese market, that will not be enough.
"It’s not good enough to simply offer our Chinese customers what are essentially copies of GM products from North America and Europe or GM Daewoo products from Korea," Murtaugh says. "Chinese vehicle buyers have their own unique tastes and preferences."
[...]
To create these vehicles for China, GM announced in June that it is investing $250 million to upgrade its Shanghai-based Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC).
PATAC is an independent company with a separate board of directors, chartered in 1997 as a 50/50 joint venture between GM and SAIC, focusing on the areas of interior, exterior, powertrain calibration and chassis tuning. The facility was expanded in 2000 to broaden its focus on the entire vehicle. PATAC currently has 775 employees but expects that to grow to 820 by the end of the year.
"By 2010, our goal is for PATAC to be a self-contained automotive development organization," Murtaugh says.
The bankruptcy of the parent company has had no effect on the business in China:
Steve Tuttle, who now is the director of vehicle manufacturing engineering from SAIC-GM-Wuling , comes from the parent company. He told Xinhua in an interview said he was glad to be able to work in China, the most successful working place of General Motors.
"In fact, GM has been learning from its partners in China." Tuttle said. "GM China’s successful experience will be a good model for the restructured company in North American."
Tuttle also introduced that the GM companies in China is autonomous, and its business operation is all going well without being affected by the parent company in U.S.
It is reported that General Motors sales in China hit a single month record in May. With a total of 156,363, the sales increased by 75.2 % over the same period last year.
Well, it’s clear what direction GM’s automotive operations are taking. The first item above mentions the future plan to export GM-branded automotive products from China to unnamed destinations, but presumably to GM’s European and North and South American markets. Indeed, last May, the Telegraph reported plans to export China-made GM cars to the U.S. market,
A plan to shift a greater proportion of the struggling car-maker’s production overseas is still being negotiated with US politicians, who have already lent GM $15.4bn (£10.18bn) in order to keep it afloat and safeguard its 90,000 US workers.
However, a spokesman for GM in Shanghai said it was "only a matter of time" before vehicles made in China are imported into the company’s home market, in another blow to the US car industry.
Needless to say, the domestic autoworkers expressed concern.





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So aren’t the primary shareholders of GM now the US government and the UAW? So where are they in this matter?
And ,of course, no mention of worker conditions,salaries, or pensions in GM’s China manufacturing.
GM ought to take a clue from companies like Ford, Honda, Toyota and others and start taking diesel and hybrid technology more seriously. They are far behind everyone in this respect because of their myopic management that thought such technology was a hoax and a fraud. The Chevrolet Volt is fine but simply too expensive to have mass appeal.
I drove a Mercury Milan hybrid the other day and frankly, I was very impressed with it. Ford is nearly at parity with Toyota and Honda with hybrid technology but needs to ramp up on diesel.
Mercedes will have a diesel hybrid S Class sedan in the US market this fall that gets 44 MPG highway. What’s GM’s answer? Nothing. They don’t have anything remotely like it ready to manufacture. The only diesel they have for the US is a 4.5L that they steadfastly refuse to put in a passenger car. Their laziness and obesssion with short term return over proactive R&D cost them dearly.
Opel, a German manufacturer that goes back to the late 1800s, acquired by GM in 1929, has a variety of diesel and diesel hybrid cars. Currently, Opel is being held in a trust as result of GM’s financial problems in America, primarily due to their banking business. Opel is noted for it’s excellent engineering shops. Why their cars or their technology haven’t penetrated the American market is beyond me.
Check out, e.g., their new 2.0L Turbo Diesel Opel Insignia ecoFLEX: 136 g CO2/km.
Saturn astra is an Opel product, and a very nice car.
The Astra line is extensive and varied. The Saturn Astra was part of the Opel line, but it is gasoline powered. It went on sale in 2008. It’s not longer being produce. GM, I believe, has sold off Saturn.
Yes, GM has agreed to sell Saturn to Roger Penske.
Gm will continue to produce vehicles for Saturn thru 2011, Penske is shopping the world for a new manufacturer to supply product to Saturn in the future.