Comments on: Vauxhall-Opel gets its new owner

By: Latest Auto News » Blog Archive » GM calls off Vauxhall sale

Latest Auto News » Blog Archive » GM calls off Vauxhall sale — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:11:54 +0000

[...] arm, Vauxhall-Opel. It had agreed to sell a majority stake to a consortium led by the parts maker Magna, a bid that was supported by a large share of money from Russia’s state [...]

By: johnjoe

johnjoe — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:15:29 +0000

i have never really owned a gm car i always bought either peugeots or citroens as they are much more creative cars with interesting features. but why does vauxhall exhist as a seperate brand surely it must cost opel a bit to do this, and it might make sense if right hand drive opels were vauxhalls and left hand drive ones were opels but the republic of ireland has right hand drive opels. the other thing is that this means every opel has an identical vauxhall which does make things boring. and why did vauxhall recently make its badge less detailed and blurred, rover did that its old badge was very detailed and then it just looked childish. but the thing about all these car companies just merging has happened in the tractor industry there are very few independant tractor companies with john deere being i think the main one. and then there is vw, since it owns so many different car companies here in europe it looks like it is following the same rule for disaster that british leyland used of building cars that compete with eachother eg the vw passat, skoda octavia, audi a4 and seat toledo are roughly the same price and compete with eachother. another thing about vw is its diesel engines which are in my opinion quite noisy compared with the competition from toyota and mercedes. i think that mercedes are quite a good company but they should go back to building the strong cars they used to, i had a e300d from 1987 and it did 350,000 miles no problem and sailed through the mot when i sold it. fiat are a good company but they are risking the whole italian car industry because if they own all the car companies in italy when they reach financial trouble so do the other companies. saab, i do not really understand how they merged with gm in the late 80’s because they were with scania

By: KarMa

KarMa — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:39:58 +0000

@43 naw, probably I wasn’t clear. the plan ’bout the NEXT 9-5 involved developing a shared new chassis, halfways though r&d saab backed off from the project, cause the development costs would have been to steep for saab to substain, and alfa now has the full ownership of the r&d part that hase done (and paid) in common.
This caused a delay for Alfa, but caused Saab quite a waste of money.
Wasn’t talking about anything that entered production yet, probably that project will end up in the next medium-big + suv alfas (which are indeed late, the only suvvish alfa being the Crosswagon that was actually still based on the 156 platform when the 159 was out already). It’s quite a messy subject, this being a phase in which r&d engineers start to have the same brand mobility that footballers have.
More or less this kind of things are those that push brands into outsourcing r&d and buy the “protptypized” result… ’cause if one partner gets broke the other gets at least… late.

Not that all this actually matters too much for the FIAT group, I suppose, ’cause they’re changing their plans a lot since the chrysler deal and opel’s soap opera.

By: twojags

twojags — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:09:19 +0000

they own another great car companey

By: chpsracing

chpsracing — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:44:05 +0000

KarMa, you’re completely wrong when you say the new 9-5 was done by SAAB and ALfa. The new 9-5 is based on the same Epsilon II platform as the Insignia and was developed by SAAB and OPEL. The new 9-3 will be based on the Global Delta platform, which is the base for the coming Astra and the Cruze…

And about this Magna – Opel/Vauxhall thing… Magna is a very active company, hopefully they’ll come with the idea of developing new cars and making new things!!! They’ll probably loose some contracts as suppliers fro other OEMs, but also some suppliers will get less contracts with Opel/Vauxhall now… things kind of balance out and the end, don’t they???

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:56:51 +0000

i think if opel gets a new owner it will be good cauase then they will stay in forgien countrys

By: R94N

R94N — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:26:23 +0000

Like the photo… it’s like them pub signs where there’s this grubby banner hung over the actual pub sign

By: KarMa

KarMa — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:06:54 +0000

It is possible, true… but… would it be healthy?
You buy a Microsoft product within any non-apple computer, and Microsoft has money in Apple anyway (and Apple’s quality went down after that happened).
Monopoly usually doesn’t help quality.

By: Latest Auto News » Blog Archive » Vauxhall; culling the weak

Latest Auto News » Blog Archive » Vauxhall; culling the weak — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:10:33 +0000

[...] the US, where Vauxhall’s parent company General Motors is now ‘Government Motors’, things still look [...]

By: svrallo svrallone

svrallo svrallone — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:11:49 +0000

@38
if you buy a finished-designed-and-bui lt-by-magna product yes.
is interesting also in another way.
Would you share chassis and engine with opel any more?
there’s something about holden i want to ask but i think i’ll ask in the new posts about vauxhall.