General Motors (GM, Financial), America based Multinational Corporation, a leading automobile maker has been consistently making its own mark in various markets worldwide. GM now wants to bag almost 8% of the European market shares. The brand name of GM is Opel in Europe except for UK, where it is Vauxhall. GM started promotion of Chevrolet brand small cars in 2005 in Europe. At the end of 2013 GM had market share of 7% and later proceeded to $0.38 billion profit. However, it could not reach the target of 8%. GM has come up with a plan of dropping Chevrolet brand in Europe by the end of 2015 to focus mainly on Opel/Vauxhall except for Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States. With this new market strategy GM is expected to reach its goal.
General Motors, the company
The company never went in losses since 2010 and can cover up all the taxes on future earnings with the past losses. In 2009 GM had to outhouse many brands like Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac and yet in 2010 the reassembled GM has made an initial public offering and even today that is counted among the top IPOs ever made.
GM has made a foot print in making almost all the types of cars that ever existed. From small cars to sports cars GM has it all. Many of the GM manufactured sports cars have been participating in international sports competitions like NASCAR, World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), V8 supercars, SCCA, etc. GM has also bagged 40 championship titles in NASCAR out of which 34 are with Chevrolet. In Australia GM has been represented by brand name of Holden. All the Opel brand cars were rebadged as Holden in 1994. In 2012 Opel branded cars were imported to Australia but due to poor sales and adoption, their sale was stopped.
Other companies effecting GM share
Ford (F, Financial) and Toyota (TM, Financial) have been emerging in the market and have considerable possibilities of affecting the shares of GM. After acquiring the British sports company, Aston Martin, Ford has been in a position to take at the least 8% of Europe market share though later it was sold. In time Ford acquired many other companies and sold them in no time and later on reduced to just 3% of the stake, citing the greatest example that shedding the mutual owners would increase the growth in markets. At first, Ford in Germany and Britain had no common models until 1960 when Ford Escort and Ford Capri were introduced. With dawn of new millennium, rise in fuel prices, legacy healthcare costs, market shares are falling, sales have declined and profit margins went unmet.
Toyota, a Japanese creation, has been on top of all in taking home the maximum sales in almost all the countries in the world. But, it has a very small market share of all in Europe. Toyota has 51.2% of total stake in Daihatsu motor company, 16.66% in Fuji Heavy Industries (FUJHY, Financial), 5.9% in Isuzu and 0.27% in Tesla (TSLA, Financial).
It has two joint ventures with China one each with India and Czech Republic. TMC, one of the largest conglomerates in the world is also a part of Toyota. In 2005 Toyota was a lot behind in sales figure when compared to GM. But, in first half of 2013, Toyota had the maximum number of sales that ever hit the boards. GM has also held tight the second position. However, the race to be world’s top automaker has been heating up. In the second half of 2013 however, the entire picture changed and GM had sold over 2.49 million cars while Toyota had sold only 2.48 million cars. Even if the difference is not very high in future, GM has all the possibility of changing the rankings.
General Motors and Europe Shares
While all the companies have the least shares in only Europe, as Volkswagen (VLKAY, Financial) the leading automobile manufacturer of Germany tops the sales in Europe. By the end of 2013 GM continued at minimum of 7% of total Europe shares. In 2014 Q2 the sales has been come up by over 0.27 million in Europe alone. Though only Chevrolet has the least sales in Europe and has huge impacts on the sales in Europe.
According to Mary Barra, the Chief Executive Officer of general Motors, the sales of Chevrolet has been constantly declining in Europe while the sales of Opel/Vauxhall have been constant. So it has been declared that in 2015 the Chevrolet brand will be completely stopped in Europe and many more models of Opel/Vauxhall will be released. It is expected that these new models will have a huge blow on the sales of General Motors.
Final Thoughts
GM has waited a very long time to bag the maximum shares of Europe and though the shares had been up and down through many years, with the coming time and change in manufacturing GM has a lot of chances to change the share market of Europe and bag at least 8% of Europe market share.
