Officials announced the move today in conjunction with GM announcing a roughly $336 million (245 million euro) investment in its Ruesselsheim plant in Germany.
DETROIT, MI- General Motors Co. will pull its Opel brand out of China, officials announced today.
"This is a long overdue decision,” said Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug, head of the Opel Works Council and Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board, in a statement.
Officials released the news in conjunction with a roughly $336 million (245 million euro) investment in its Ruesselsheim plant and the announcement of two new models for the German plant, including one that will be sold as a Buick in the U.S.
Due to "competitive reasons," GM says details about this new car will not be announced until the end of the year. Production is expected to start in the second half of this decade.
GM President and Opel Supervisory Board Chairman Dan Ammann said the additional model -- one of two for the plant by 2020 -- is an "important step" for GM to "pave the way for Opel's profitable growth."
The decision to pull Opel from China comes as Buick continues to thrive in the country and presumably take sales from the German brand.
“It would have cost hundreds of millions of euros to raise awareness of the Opel brand and to expand the distribution network," Schäfer-Klug said. "Buick, however, is one of the market leaders in China and we plan to intensify our future collaboration, with several projects currently under examination."
Last year, 22 Opel dealers in China sold 4,365 vehicles. In comparison, Buick – with 650 dealers – sold about 810,000 vehicles in China, including several that were co-developed with Opel.
Globally, Buick set an all-time global sales record last year, delivering 1.032 million vehicles worldwide. Buick was GM’s third largest passenger car brand after Chevrolet (4.984 million units) and Opel/Vauxhall (1.064 million units).
GM said sales of Opel vehicles in China are expected to cease as of January 2015.
The news is the latest in a string of international operations decisions from the Detroit-based automaker in the past four months. . In December, the Detroit-based carmaker said it would pull Chevrolet out of Europe and that its Holden unit would stop manufacturing vehicles in Australia.