GM Daewoo on the rise

Who, just four years ago, could have foreseen that GM Daewoo would be one of the bright lights in the GM firmament?

The South Korean manufacturer was purchased by GM for fire sale money after a badly calculated dutch auction by the previous management. Ford bailed out of the auction early, leaving GM to collect on the deal.

Now, even with GM itself struggling to right its own accounting, GM Daewoo is enjoying enormous growth with 34 per cent more exports for the first half of 2007 (year to date).

Total exports of CBU (Completely Built Up) vehicles for 2007 come to 414,251 units thus far, versus 308,716 for YTD 2006.

Plans are in the works to consolidate on this performance with a new soft top sports car, the G2X, which is based on the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. The company is also working on a new small hatchback.

Building on GM Daewoo's low cost of goods sold and rapidly improving design and manufacturing techniques, the parent company is reported to be investing $6 billion in facilities and R&D commencing next year. The money will be invested progressively to 2011, according to websites 'Automotive-Business-Review.com' and 'edmunds.com'.

GM-Daewoo exports cars to Australia, sold under the Holden banner as the Barina, Viva, Epica and Captiva.

On the flip side, Holden exports the Statesman/Caprice to South Korea as the L4X model (more here). Former Holden designer Max Wolff is currently heading up a design team at GM-Daewoo and Holden is known to be consulting to the Korean factory for development of a new generation of cars that will be launched in coming years.

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