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Ken Gratton5 Feb 2018
NEWS

Opel relaunch not on the radar

Regional PSA chief holds the door open, but admits there is 'no urgency' to bring back former GM brand

The parent company for Peugeot and Citroen has 'a lot on [its] plate' at present. But reviving the Opel brand in the Australian market has been given the broccoli treatment – pushed aside in favour of more palatable items.

Out here for last week's launch of the Peugeot 5008, Emmanuel Delay, Operational Director for PSA Groupe in the India-Pacific region, told motoring.com.au in an exclusive interview that any plan to rebuild Opel in Australia was currently hypothetical at best.

"This is really very speculative," he said, "and... we are now debating, do we bring DS back? For us that's kind of at least as high on the list as [the question of] do we bring Opel to Australia?"

"Opel is a new brand [within PSA Groupe]. Are we going to play that card right now or not?

"Kind of thinking out loud, we don't have a full line-up to bring anyway, so that limits us a little bit, and we have so much on our plate... it's really a matter of how much can we swallow as a group?

"In general, if we were starting from scratch... in let's say a new market that did not exist before, we would never want to position our brands in one shot. We would want to [open] with one or two to build critical scale and success.

"I want to be clear... Opel is not outside our scope. It is a real child, or it's one of our 'children', one of our brands – and therefore we look at it as an equal brand to one of our other brands. But the way we play that card in future, to be honest, we haven't decided.

"There is a constraint, which is the models that we will be able by contract to bring to Australia, and given all the other things that we will need to do right, then we definitely do not feel urgency to bring Opel back to Australia. But we will have to study in due course."

A key component of the deal agreed by PSA and GM, when the latter sold German subsidiary Opel to the former last year, was a non-compete clause in the contract. While Holden sells Opel-built Commodore and Astra models in Australia, PSA is not permitted to sell the same cars in the local market, badged as Opels. It protects Holden's sales base.

But Delay also had a slightly different take on the matter.

"The most likely scenario is that we would not want, either by contract or other reasons to suddenly bring in a model... we have a contract to supply Astra and Insignia – as a Commodore – to Holden," he said.

"Obviously it makes no sense to take these exact same cars and badge them with an Opel badge and try to sell them [here] under the Opel brand."

In other words, despite Opel being the manufacturer, Australians might be more likely to buy the same cars from the known brand – Holden.

Holden has previously revealed it might source Commodore from Buick in the event that PSA developed a new Opel Insigna (pictured) on one of its own platforms – and sooner rather than later. But news out of Holden today indicates the local GM subsidiary and PSA are committed to a six-year supply contract for the Insignia-as-Commodore on the existing GM (E2XX) platform.

"If we would ever decide to bring Opel as a brand to Australia, we would want the line-up to be a 'PSA DNA' set of models, rather than a 'GM DNA' portfolio," Delay said. That would then preclude Opel relaunching in Australia with a full range for six years, unless the Insignia were to be built concurrently on two platforms – one GM, one PSA. That's not a very likely scenario, however.

Opel could reboot in Australia with a limited range of models owing nothing to GM engineering however, suggests Delay. The PSA chief explained that under the terms of the non-compete clause Opel could relaunch in Australia, as long as the models introduced didn't compete directly with Holden lines built by Opel. He was not definitive, however, that this would be the plan.

"We cannot be conclusive on that," he replied. "In theory we could still say that we're going to start with a smaller number of models, which will be ones that will be already or are about to become... PSA DNA.

"And then as time goes by, and as we replace the line-up – and the Opel line-up becomes PSA DNA – then we could theoretically start the Opel brand [in Australia] before all models are PSA DNA."

If Opel were to bounce back in Australia, newly appointed PSA distributor Inchcape would be the most likely candidate to manage the brand and its dealer network, Delay said.

Beyond the Australian perspective, Opel shares its Vivaro van with Renault – the Trafic being the donor design. It's a legacy agreement forged by Opel when owned by GM, with Renault, a direct competitor to PSA. The question arising is this: How long will it take PSA to cut loose this and any other legacy products shared with PSA competitors?

"I think, frankly, Opel doesn't have to be 'purely PSA'," Delay replied.

"It would be nice for it to be 'purely PSA'; it might not be the only option that we have. So I think that any of the arrangements that we have with other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] has to be looked at on a stand-alone basis – and a business case.

"Is the current arrangement that we have with our current partners – and they might be competitors – an arrangement that we think should continue on? Or should we sever that arrangement? It's a question that we have to ask ourselves all the time. It is true also that it is in the DNA of PSA Groupe to have partnerships with competitors.

"In the past we have been doing things with BMW, Mitsubishi, and there are many examples... Toyota...

"So it is actually in the DNA of PSA to partner, on a case-by-case basis with competitors. We're quite good at that. These relationships will last for a long time, so there is no 'must change'; we'll look at it on a case-by-case basis."

All of this remains hypothetical, however. PSA in the India-Pacific region is more intent on building up sales of Peugeot and Citroen in the short term, along with allied brand DS, if it should be reintroduced to Australia. The local market is the third largest in the region, after Japan and South Korea. A chequered history in India has failed to produce meaningful sales volumes there since re-establishing a presence in that market in 2010.

"Today, Peugeot is the one brand that we must make successful, because it will bring the critical scale that we think we need to be successful," Delay stated.

"Then Citroen has been here for a long time; even though the awareness is not very high, it definitely has a connection with certain Australian customers, so we definitely want to make Citroen successful."

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Written byKen Gratton
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