They say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and true enough in the case of GM’s relationship with its European subsidiary Opel, there seems to be a lot of smoke piling up lately. Just yesterday, press reports from Auto Bild and Spiegel Online said that GM is looking for a buyer, but the news was quickly dismissed by spokespeople from both Opel and the government of Germany’s state of Thuringia, home to one of the brand’s factories.
Today, Reuters came out with a new report saying the Detroit automaker is “frustrated” with its money-losing Opel brand and is “considering options for a turnaround”, noting, however, that a sale of the Opel brand is highly unlikely.
“Akerson is fed up with Opel, and the turnaround isn’t gaining traction,” a unnamed source who is close to the GM CEO told Reuters. “He is trying to think of all possibilities to improve performance. But a sale is wishful thinking,” the source added.
It appears that the problem is GM’s executives feel “frustration” with the slow turnaround of the Opel brand, which if all goes well, will break even this year and return to profits in 2012. However, Reuters noted that the firm’s management has said it will take around five years to restore the brand’s image in Germany after the company appeared to be going down for months.
Inside sources told the news agency that GM’s top brass is concerned that in its current form, the turnaround plan “may not be sustainable in the long term” but the company is not in the market to sell Opel. This is because its business is closely tied with the rest of the Detroit automaker’s global operations in terms of technology and vehicle architecture.
