Why do you think GM failed in Europe?

Toyota and Mazda aren't europeans and they have great succes, because they are building really good cars.

"Why General Motors Left Europe" "Why GM Failed in India" "Why Ford And Other American Cars Don’t Sell In Japan" There's a pattern here...

5:20 The big three German manufacturers dominate the EU market? No wonder Americans can't sale cars in the EU, even the expert doesn't seem to be aware the top 3 are VW group, PSA and RENAULT. Not VW, BMW and Mercedes.

Should have left Opel and Saab do it's own thing. Twenty-five years ago these companies were on par with the other European manufacturers, then GM sent their managers in and the rest is history.

It's because GM (and by extension, other US automakers) doesn't understand the needs of the rest of the world. This is the same case in Japan. Quality and brand perception aside, US automakers can't seem to understand why their huge cars/SUV/trucks are not desired in countries where two-way roads are as wide as single lanes in the US. They are basically out of touch.

Opel was doing OK, till the US managers decided to go help them in 1990... The rest is history.

Jeremy Clarkson: "Because it's American. All American cars are rubbish."

Just one year after being bought by PSA, Opel achieved an operating income of 859 € million, the first positive income since 20 years... GM governance was just a big joke... Saab still remembers it.

Yeah, this is mostly BS excuses. Opel was originally a German brand, so their products were, after their takeover, first perceived as German cars. What actually went wrong? This: GM would regularly rotate in and out "hot shot" managers at the top of Opel Europe. Their job performance was rated based on their ability to reduce costs. One manager would reduce costs by, say, 3%, then be replaced by the next manager who was incentivised to do the same. Obviously, after enough rotations, Opel was purely focused on making cheap cars rather than good cars. Nothing GM released in Europe could qualitatively compete with the other European automakers. The Opel brand became associated with faulty, unreliable and cheap. That was the end of Opel profitability in Europe.

30 years ago Opel and Audi produced cars of the same level in Germany, namely, the entry premium level cars, which were at the second tier ( 1st Mercedes, BMW, 2nd Audi, Opel, 3rd Volkswagen, Ford). Fastforward 30 years, Audi is a major premium/luxury brand in the world, while Opel is competing with Chevys thanks to GM's management.

Why Europeans don't buy American cars? Simple answer: Europeans build better and more fuel-efficient cars. Fuel is way more expensive in Europe than in America, so that's the two reasons.

Unfortunately the cars built by U.S. owned companies are poorly built. That is not being anti U.S. but simply stating fact.

'3:35 If your big idea as an automaker is to sell trucks and suv's to Europeans you may as well give up before you start.

If GM would have let Opel do it's thing like Ford lets Ford of Europe do their thing, none of this would've needed to happen.

I have watched US Corporations think they can take the US model transplant to another country and win. When business does not cater to local needs they fail.

Instead of paying big money to CEO, and management, spend those money on R&D, and quality control, then people may start to buy American car again.

Same story as always: if you want to sell cars in Europe, make cars that are as good as Europe's.

All I can think when watching this video is: excuses, excuses, excuses. Like we make cars but consumers dont like them. How about making cars that consumers do want?

"How hard it is to be global automobile brand" - well most Japanese and German brands made it, so it's probably just American incompetence.

Engineer: let’s make an improvement on our vehicles, make them better and keep improving them little by little. We will sell a better vehicle and slowly turn our image and sales around. Like Hyundai and Kia. MBA: Nah, let’s sell it off, show a quarterly profit, keep Wall Street happy. We’ll worry about our next bonus after we get cash this bonus.

Wtf how can you blame unions when every carmaker in Europe have to deal with the unions especially the German automakers and all European car makers have to deal with the same laws and regulations. Maybe the problem is that us companies are bad at cooperating with the unions and rather wanna fight with them.

And yet, European manufactures do well in America. It's almost as if quality and design matters to car buyers

The Walmart of car companies.

GM also butchered Saab. A fantastic car and proudly Swedish till GM closed it down.

Why isnt Saab mentioned? That company had a lot of potential (yet GM destroyed it)

5:13 Ford isn't pulling out of Europe. They're streamlining their operation and focusing on their best sellers and dropping the cars people don't buy. The focus and the fiesta are fantastic cars and sell millions. A smart move by Ford. Put all their effort into their best sellers to make them even better.

I will still never forgive GM for killing Saab. They killed my favorite car brand.

Before leaving Europe they destroyed SAAB the Swedish brand !!!!

Gas prices in europe ->we need refined engines and not a 7.3 diesel/ petrol with 130hp that does 8mpg...

So they sold their business to PSA in France. A country where the unions are as strong as it gets…. and guess… all those GM managers claiming that you cannot build cars in North America, Australia or Europe because it is too expensive fell flat on their face. In the first 6 months after the take over the former GM brands made half a billion Euro for PSA. So what game are the beancounters of Detroit playing?

"GM launched Chevrolet in Europe" big NO! They imported asian Daewoo cars and put a Chevrolet badge on them. That did not make them Chevrolets. It was just another impersonal car.

Screwed the potential buyers of SAAB, the newly sold Euro Divisions immediately made a profit. For more than 20 years GM has not made any interesting vehicles. SUV and pick ups will eventually lose favour.

And yet European brands still do well in America . Build good cars get good sales

They are crap cars. This whole video made zero true points. When Hyundai makes better car than you, you have to close down and move out.

Having worked at GMAC , the fish has always stunk from the head down. GM had the wrong products which don't hold up as well.

Opel (GM) was once the big number 1 in Germany 1960-1980. And then the quality went down... Without GM, Opel is now again at over 10% market share, and makes no loss.

When Trump was angry that we Europeans don't buy as many US cars as Americans are buying European cars, the German vice chancellor and economy minister simply replied "then you have to build better cars". And to be honest.... I think he was right^^

Simply GM doesn`t know how to run a company, just ask them why it killed the EV1

I stopped buying american crap 19 years ago Maybe if they made quality they would sell

China, where GM heavily relies on, the consumers' tastes are turning more like Japan and Europe, not the US. Ford almost failed out in China market recently (the market share drops to less than 1%), GM is likely to follow that trend, and it is already on the way.

GM exited India, Australia, Japan and now Europe. American car companies find it easier to roll over rather then compete, No wonder Chinese are taking over everywhere.

I purchased 2 GM cars new off the lot. Both had transmission failures under 40000 miles. Why would I ever buy another one?

GM is the only company who alsways wants to discontinue their most selling brand.They fear competition.

Love the expert: "People no buy car, car expensive to build. This bad"

What a crock; the reason GM failed in Europe is the same reason why they’re failing in the rest of the world - they sold poorly-designed, poorly assembled and inherently unreliable vehicles and made almost no investment locally. Now that Korea can make better-designed, more reliable vehicles with longer warranties, the ‘cheap-end’ of the market has been lost to GM. The GM-Daewoo vehicles foisted on non-US markets are simply appalling quality. I suspect that once the fashion for SUVs dies down, GM will face similar difficulties in their home territory...

"They couldn't make it because they weren't European" Well then how does Toyota and VW do so well in the USA? Just more CNBC being blindNBblind

The same bunch that went to Japan complaining that Japan didn't import American cars, when they (GM , Ford, Chrysler) didn't build right hand drive cars. They don't understand markets.

In 1975 the most newly registrated cars in Germany were made by Opel. It actually started in the 1980s with José Ignacio López de Arriotúa becoming lead buyer of Opel. He gagged the component suppliers to a level that was unknown until that time. This lead to a massive lost in quality of the parts, and therefore for the whole cars. That's why this effect is called "the Lopez-effect" here in Germany. Opel could never recover from this big fail. And actually Lopez went from Opel to VW, with seven of his "warriors" (that was the way he called them). VW was crippled at that time, and for his methods to reduce production costs he was called "the strangler of Wolfsburg". BTW. public prosecutors investigated against him and his team for industrial espionage, after leaving Opel they still had documents and data for new Opel models in their posession. Lopez had to pay 400,000 german marks, VW had to pay 100 million US dollars to GM and had to buy parts from GM for one billion dollars. VW recovered from this very fast, but Opel didn't. The lowered manufacturing costs were actually paid by the customers, for example on the Golf IV. The relais for the blinkers was built into the switch for the warning lights. So if the relay failed, the repair shop had to replace the whole switch instead of just simply the failed relay. Causing higher costs for the customer.

GM destroyed SAAB. They simply don't get what makes a great car. They only got what they deserved.

Don't you think it's funny they couldn't turn a profit for 20 years, and then in it's first year the new owner makes 10% of their investment hahahaah

I certainly wouldn't characterize GM in China as a success story - more like an object lesson in how you can get off to a really great start and then completely blow it. Going back about 15 years, the most common non-Chinese car brand you saw in China was Buick. This was largely because GM were one of the first companies to set up a JV in China (with SAIC) - the cars were somewhat expensive by local market standards, but they were also clearly better than the competition, and sold well despite the relatively high prices. Then other companies got into the market - both Japanese (Toyota, Nissan) and European (VW) - GM appear to have overestimated the value of their brand recognition, and concluded that they didn't need to either update their products or adjust their prices. They also seem to have failed to adapt to other markets changes - things like electric seats were becoming standard fitment on cars from the Chinese domestic brands, but were still extra-cost options on the GM ones. The Japanese and the Europeans didn't make the same mistake, and made sure that even their lowest trim levels always had at least the features that the competition did.

So within a year, PSA made Opel profitable ... whereas US managers were incapable of getting there within a decade. There's a word for that - incompetence.

If GM would pull their head out of their ass and build quality cars this wouldn’t have happened

Fun fact : Opel and Vauxhaul are already saved and are doing very well now... thanks to oldest car manufacturer still in activity... *BIG LOL*

Never saw such a bullsh** Back in the 80es the Opel Kadett (over in the US you could buy the same car as Pontiac Le Mans, it was basically sold globally) was the second best selling car in Germany only behind Volkswagen Golf/Jetta (counted as the same model for statistics up to the Jetta Mk5 because the Jetta basically was a Golf with rectangular headlights and a trunk back then). At the same time the Ford Escort was the best selling car in the second biggest European market, the UK. So there was a time when American owned brands were sellng well here. But they tried to control everything. They should just have seen Chrysler, who made the Opel-Mistake 40 years ago. They owned Simca-Talbot but thought their US cars are better anyways. So they sold off Simca-Talbot (to PSA by the way) and replaced their cars with the Plymouth Horizon (that was before they sold the brand so basically PSA continued building it for some years) and continued with the Plymouth Saratoga and Voyager under the Chrysler brand, later followed by the Neon, Cirrus and 300M. Only Voyager and 300M can be considered at least not a complete failure, the only Chrysler success in Europa were smaller Jeep models (Wrangler, Cherokee) when SUV (European "SUV" are mainly the American crossover class) were demanded but Europeans did not build them yet. GM always tried to make Opel more American. But other than in the 50es and 60es, when everything from America was modern and even Mercedes had to respond by building cars with tail fins, that did not work. And even after they generously allowed Opel to design their own cars, they still put American Management on top of the whole. Ford gives the European organisation much more freedom and that works way better. So the small cars like Fiesta and Focus meet the European taste, Ford develops small SUV in Europe. Meanwhile many US Ford are designed in Europe and a success in the US. Beside Fiesta and Focus also the Fusion was developed at least with Major European influence as it has to be sold successfully here either as the Mondeo. So are the smaller SUV and Vans: Ecosport, Escape Mk3, C-Max. Finally, there were identical platforms and even whole cars between Europe and US. The Opel Corsa shown in the same moment Shares its chassis with the Chevrolet Sonic while the Buick Cascada, Encore and Regal are plainly rebadged Opel Cascada, Mokka and Insignia. Basically you can even fake change them by simply replacing badges, lights and grille from Opel to Buick and back. In Germany it is common for Opel owners to replace badging by cooler looking ones, mainly Vauxhall and Holden - Buick's triple coat of arms cannot cope with their beasts in terms of coolness, even the original Opel flash looks cooler. Meanwhile many Opel dealers even know the spare part numbers for Holden and Vauxhall logos and name plates. So all that part of the Video proofs is that GM USA had no clue at all what Opel was doing despite trying to put more control on it than rival Ford on their more successful European branch. And that's basically what went wrong at GM.

I'm German and I have only ever known one guy to have an US American brand car at all. He said he hat to wait weeks for spare parts to be shipped in, the darn thing was constantly broken and a fuel guzzler. Ever tried to maneuver through a medival city where the council tried to solve the problem of space with one-way-streets (e.g. Regensburg)? The smaller the car the better. US American brands simply cannot compete!

Part 2: Why GM left USA and went to Mexico 😎🔥💸💰

Good luck to GM in China🤣.. funny that PSA reported a profit on Open/Vauxhall on the first year after the aquisition

Gas cost in Europe $2 wil get you 0.26gallon (1 liter)

GM Car production in Australia stopped a while back. The company really knows how to downsize.

Funny how quality matters to car buyers.😉

The same thing happened in South Africa, GM sold all its shares and its manufacturing plant to Isuzu Motors in 2017.

One, europeans don't drive pick up trucks, they are mostly used by companies and farmers. Two, GM hatchbacks and sedans, while fun to drive, feel somewhat outdated compared to those from VW, Peugeot or even Renault. If you visit the US, you notice that despite having groundbreaking companies like Tesla, most cars feel old fashion in terms of interior design or infotainment. There is an over fixation on size and power, while Europe is more keen on maneuverability and sophistication.

Americans in general (no pun intended) have different standards when it comes to cars. Also, the type of cars people drive & prefer in NA vs Europe is very different. GM just did not know how to adapt to European market. Other manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan and Mazda are showing that it is possible to sell and be profitable.

Don't blame others, its the poor quality that makes the difference. Look at Toyota

GMs market share would have been zero from 2008 on without the bailout

Europeans don't hate American made cars, but you can't sell same car in america and europe simply because europe has different infrastructure and regulations. Japanese and Korean cars sell well in Europe because those regions have similar needs as Europeans. Smaller cars, more fuel efficient as fuel is expensive in Europe and emission standards are high and always increasing. Making gas guzzlers not only expensive to run due to fuel cost, but also expensive to license, insure and register every year.

In the case of the German car manufacturers, the employees sit equally on the supervisory boards and work on the success of the company. In good times as in bad times. GM has simply not understood the needs of European customers for the past 25 years.

It's not because "ItS just Not EuROpean" ford would be failing but ford makes good pretty reliable cars and Europeans know what they are buying

Very interesting, although I would have one remark: Fords are extremely popular throughout Europe, particularly the Focus.

The narrator seemed like he was blaming everyone else but GM

I just traded out my seven year old GM truck (2500 Suburban 4 X 4) and bought a Toyota. The GM went through many fuel pumps (9), dash climate control switch panels (4), constant cooling system issues, several blend door motors, dash blower motor bearing failures, bearing failures in the alternators, fourth gear in the transmission starting to slip under load, engine starting to use coolant. The unit had just turned 90K at trade in. The nickel & dime thing didn't apply here, it was wads of $100.00 bills at a time, having a tow company on speed dial.

Because only Americans still fall for GM crap

Opel tech kept it afloat. Gm is a lost cause.

When i can buy a better made Dacia or Skoda , why buy a G.M ? We love U.S cars B.T.W , but not their stripped out shitboxes that we were offered.

GM took a lot of profit from Opel to make the numbers for the US market look better. One year after the sale Opel started to make profit again in europe.

They're simply not competitive vs. European engineering.

This is all just excuses. GM has made cars specifically for the European market for many decades, and at one time Opel was ranked very high in quality. Also, that bar graph of annual losses suggests that GM was one year away from profit. Not making a profit for 20 years is a strong indication that the company has no idea what it's doing.

GM left India too. It has no presence in Japan. So you're trying to tell me that America is basically aiding in its survival?

Uneven trade treaties are a big reason USA cars fail in Europe as well...

Oh that's fine... I'll be glad when Opel can finally be able to reintroduce their cars to the U.S. post-GM. GM's business strategy is bonkers.

You ppl can't even pronounce Peugeot and Citroën right?

How can GM do well in a foreign market when it can't even figure out how to prosper in its own domestic US market?

Big companies always blame Unions, when in fact it's always management. Wrong decisions, overspending etc.

"PSA, known for brands such as poojoh and citron"

Bad management decisions killed GM. How much you wanna bet that all of those hopeless managers still got fat bonuses? (Bad decisions include design, pseudo-engineering and marketing decisions. GM is infamously bad at all of those.)

One important reason of the losses of Opel is that development costs of new models where put on the balance of Opel Europe. So GM USA had more profit on their balance. GM management USA took excessive bonus extra on their wages.

A German view on the topic, mainly focusing on the Opel brand (though it might as well go for Vauxhall too): There always has been a partly difficult or stressful relationship between Opel and GM, to a lesser degree the same is true for German (European) Ford and Ford (US). Both companies, Opel and Ford (Cologne) have a long history of building reliable and sturdy cars at least from the 1920‘s up until the 1960‘s. They were seen as German rather than US brands (cars). In the 1970‘s and 1980‘s BMW and Audi successfully could enter the premium market, join Mercedes in the luxury segment. Opel and Ford however both could not get a model firmly positioned in the premium market, they were seen as mass market cars, mainly in competition with VW. And they had another problem: their mother companies from Detroit wanted to manage their European daughters out of the US. More so with GM, a little less with Ford. To get more profit they thought a „World“ car would be a good idea. However US-designed cars did not go very well with European customers, some models simply looked weird in European eyes (some models of Opel’s Senator, Ford‘s Scorpio). Quality issues (rust) did not go well either (Opel Corsa, Astra). Another problem for Opel‘s losses were design work done for GM, but not fully payed for. Being in a mass market position, Opel and Ford not only got heavy competition by VW, but Fiat, Renault, Peugeot and Volvo. Add first Japanese (Toyota, Honda) and later Korean cars (Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai). It did not help that GM sold cars developed from Opels under their Chrysler brand too. Add that Opel did not have a SUV, no larger Sedans to speak of (in any number), Opel was only left with Corsas and Astras, small and medium size cars in a shrinking market. Maybe, if GM had given Opel and Vauxhall more independence, more leeway to act independently, or on a European level (maybe including Saab), they might have fared better. I am not sure, but it might very well be that GM micromanaged too much from their headquarters, acting too „American“ on the European market. Maybe a quite independent European division might have fared better. I guess Ford did somehow better in Europe as they had their daughters on a longer leash.

American vehicles just don’t seem to sell very well around the world

I'm from the UK London most of the car from GM are just trash. I would rather buy a 30 years old Japanese car than a new GM car.

THE EUROPEANS GOT WISE TO GM EXPENSIVE CARS MADE WITH CHEAP PARTS AND ALWAYS BREAKING DOWN AND EXPENSIVE TO REPAIR.

I love high emmissions standards regulations because I dont like toxic smoke!

A chart of GM Board salary and bonus payout would be interesting.

My friend was in a pinch a couple years ago and ended up buying a new Chevy Aveo. Understandably its a budget eco car but the thing was put together so laughably bad, interior was held together with hardware screws, the transmission started going out after 10 thousand miles, the headliner turned into chalk, the interior plastic warped in the heat, etc. You would literally be better in a soviet made car like a Yugo. Japan and Europe wouldn't dream of putting together something so terrible, even at the bottom end of price points. GM should just die imo, liquidate and let the next Tesla or whoever have the market share.

it's not just selling opel and vauxhall, cadillac and chevrolet were also in the market

My dad in Scotland bought his first Vauxhall saloon car in the mid 1950's. He swore he would never, ever buy another, and didn't!

GM left Australia etc. Generally build crap cars, in Europe and Australia, nobody wanted.

Psa literally have the same car reskinned 4 times now just like vw does with skoda and seat lol

Scotty Kilmer says GM is pure trash!