Pretty damning indictment in today's Die Welt by an "anonymous insider" about how parent company General Motors hollowed out it's successful German subsidiary. According to this account, GM confiscated Opel's valuable patents and designs and then forced the German company to pay outrageous "licensing fees" back to Detroit:
zahlen wir Gebühren an die. Muss ich erwähnen, dass Opel nie einen Cent für
seine Patente gesehen hat? (So now our patents are at GM and we pay a fee to them for every car we produce. Do I have to point out that Opel never saw one cent for its patents?)
Die saugen uns aus, die fressen uns leer. Allein
im letzten Jahr haben wir an GM 650 Millionen Euro überwiesen. Wofür? Nur
für Gebühren von unseren eigenen Patenten. (They suck us dry, they chew us down to the bone. Last year alone we transferred $650 million Euros to GM. What for? Just for fees on our own patents.)
These Opel patents were also cited by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a reason for not approving a massive bailout of the German automaker. Without the patents what real value does Opel have? It was thought that these patents had been pledged as collateral to the US Dept. of Treasury for the Bailout package in the US. Now GM denies this:
potential buyer for its European Opel/Vauxhall operations would have
access to the company's patents, addressing a potential barrier to a
sale of the brands.
"Any intellectual property would be fully
available to Opel/Vauxhall and the new owner," GM spokesman Chris
Preuss told Dow Jones Newswires.
Question is, would a quasi-nationalized Opel, even with the patents, be able to compete in the European market? The "anonymous insider" claims that Opel's engineering for small cars is second to none, so one idea would be to form a cooperation with Daimler and BMW for small car design and production.
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so where is all that money now?
Why on earth would GM sell Opel? Maybe it is just me, but the only decent products they have are Opel based designs? The Astra should be selling, but they never advertise it? People have no clue it even exists in a Saturn dealer. The Aura and new Vue are great, what is the problem?
People are so weird, the entire Opel line should be sold through Saturn. They are set to compete with VW and Honda, they need to sell it that way. The small cars they need the small cars, the price of fuel is going to rise again they need affordable efficient small cars. It amazing to me when they introduced the Outlook? I thought another big SUV and what does that have to do with Saturn.
If they sell Opel, then they should sell Saturn with it. Then it would be Opel/Vauxhall/Saturn and have access to the American Market and production. They need to sell it off and slice it up the UAW as well, new company new contracts. If they strike then make the cars in in other plants.
They should be able to shift production around to be most efficient.
I hate what GM did to Saab or what they didn’t do?
GM is to big, aspects of them should be sold off but it is important that some production remain in the states, just under new labor agreements. They should sell Pontiac to Toyota, they never took advantage of the plant in California they should be selling a Corolla based G5 not a cobalt re-skinned. They could be selling products based on the Tacoma truck but they created a small pick-up with a 5 cylinder engine that gets 6 cylinder mileage? The S-10 was popular the new truck is not.
I think TATA should buy Saab from GM and then sell the Jaguar and Saabs with its products in the US maybe call it international motor works. Sell a full line and central services, GM could sell them Saab and a couple of factories in the US, again with new labor contracts.
I am serious slice the monster up.
opel’s dissolution is due to the incompetent european executives. they could have salvaged the company if only they’ve discussed the problems and consulted them well with their american counterparts.