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Showing posts with label Astra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astra. Show all posts

News: Can GM's new plan save Opel?

Posted by Alex Bale Friday, January 11, 2013

In a week when rumours once again surfaced that Opel was up for sale to PSA Peugeot Citroen, the German firm's US masters at General Motors have come up with (another) new plan to turn around the loss-making car company.

Interestingly, GM Europe boss Steve Girsky admits that this is the first Opel turnaround programme "not to include hope as part of the package" and the 10-year plan centres on cutting costs (Opel needs to get its fixed costs down by about €500-million, and make around €1-billion of savings in its parts-and-platform sharing agreement with PSA) and to introduce 23 new models (along with a bevy of new, more efficient engines) by 2022. The plan, rather playfully, is called Drive! 2022. 

If everything works, Opel will hit break-even in a couple of years and move back into profit by around 2018. Some of the plan has already been implemented; the tie-up with Peugeot and Citroen is already well progressed, the decision to close the loss-making factory in Bochum has already been taken and several key new models, including the Astra saloon, Adam city car and Mokka compact SUV, have already been introduced.

Opel actually had quite a good year in 2012, finishing up as Europe's third best-selling brand and going a long way to winding down stocks of unsold models. Next up will be to start building non-Opel-badged models in Opel's German plants, to take up the slack in capacity. Expect to see Buicks for China (China is now a massive market for this classic American brand) and mechanically-identical Chevrolets for Europe built in Russelsheim and elsewhere. And, although the plan doesn't overtly admit it, expect too to see the next-generation of Citroen C5 and Peugeot 508 built on a common platform with the Opel Insignia in Germany.

News: Opel cascades us with new Cascada photos

Posted by Alex Bale Friday, October 19, 2012

These are the first official pictures of Opel's replacement for the Astra cabriolet, the new Cascada.

With this being the fourth new model that Opel has launched this year (following on from the Ampera, Mokka and Adam), clearly GM thinks that the way out of the firm's current cash crisis is to keep hitting us with more and more new models.

And the Cascada is certainly rather gorgeous,with some seriously sexy styling thanks in part to a folding fabric roof that doesn't need a butt like Jennifer Lopez' to store it when folded. Opel seems to be retreating from the weight and complication of folding steel hard tops and it's a move we applaud.

It looks  a lot like an Astra, but with a 70mm longer wheelbase than the outgoing Astra TwinTop, it's leaner and sleeker, and should be a bit more roomy inside too. That roof can be raised or lowered in just 17 seconds, and at speeds of up to 48kmh. Plus, when it's down, it only robs 70-litres from the 350-litre boot, so the Cascada remains reasonably practical.

Opel's existing range of 1.4 petrol turbo and 2.0 turbo diesel engines will be available, and the Cascada will be the debut vehicle for a new 1.6 petrol turbo with 168bhp, fitted at first only with a six-speed automatic gearbox.

While Opel claims a 43% improvement in torsional stiffness over the old Astra cabrio, prices will the stiffer too, with the Cascada tilting at the likes of the Audi A5 convertible and BMW 3 Series carbio. Don't expect much change from €40k, if any.

"The midsize cabriolet segment is only occupied by very high-priced cars from premium manufacturers," commented Thomas Sedran, Deputy Chairman of Opel. "With the Cascada, Opel offers all the typical features and premium qualities of a midsize convertible, but at an affordable price."

One thing though; the name. Cascada? Sounds like a dodgy 80s perfume...







Astra to be UK congenital Next Generation Vauxhall Astra

Posted by Alex Bale Thursday, May 17, 2012
Following Astra to be British isles congenital Next-generation Vauxhall Astra will likely be congenital with Ellesmere Port, General Motors has verified. The next-generation Vauxhall Astra will be congenital with the firm’s ability inside Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, since allotment of a £125million purchase that will managed the approaching of two,100 workers and actualize 700 new jobs.

The actual advertisement comes after endure night’s political election by Vauxhall agents on a brand-new pay along with altitude deal. An cutting 94 percent voted in preference of the new cope, which will acquiesce added adjustable several hours as the bulb moves appear 24-hour, seven-days-a-week working.
Manufacture of the next-generation Astra will certainly activate inside 2015, and the acceding - which lasts until the aboriginal 2020s -- is for at the very least 160,500 cars to be congenital every year.

The approaching from the Ellesmere Port lamp had been beneath threat, using ancestor aggregation General Motors advertisement connected losses within Europe. GM’s European analysis Opel provides absent 11billion us dollars (£7billion) back 1997, and 750million dollars endure year alone.

Communicating at the Detroit Electric motor Show ahead of time this year, Chief executive of GM International Procedures Tim Shelter told Vehicle Express: “We tend to be bent in order to about-face these two plentiful brands (Vauxhall and Opel) around. Crucial players through GM are generally alive about this, including me personally, and it will be considered a ample allotment individuals focus in the next few years.”

He stated that the plan is to advance advantage by accretion sales, presenting a host of services, and by acronym accomplishment expenses. Lee said, “If we currently accept two warehouses in Belgium, again we'll now acknowledge one.”

He accepted that could aftereffect within approaching task losses, yet said: “We will body vehicles area all of us advertise them and won’t search bargain manual work about the planet, as it doesn’t complete sense.”.

Next of Opel’s department in Bochum, Philippines, is still below threat. Bochum creates 30 vehicles an hour over three accouterment a day, while Ellesmere Port produces Forty seven cars one hour over two accouterment a day.

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