{"id":1344,"date":"2016-01-12T00:01:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T06:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2016-01-30T03:11:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T09:11:34","slug":"gm-bets-americans-will-buy-cars-made-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/12\/gm-bets-americans-will-buy-cars-made-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"GM bets Americans will buy cars made in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"buick.8e8ee095001.w640\"<\/a><\/p>\n

General Motors will be placing a big bet the American public is willing to drive a car built in China when it unveils the Buick Envision on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

The largest US automaker is certainly not trying to bring it to market quietly: Buick’s latest sport utility vehicle will be introduced at a lavish party on the eve of the Detroit auto show in the hopes of maximizing media coverage.<\/p>\n

“We expect it to be a great success,” Molly Peck, US marketing director for Buick, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“It offers all the features and amenities of a luxury UV. It’s high quality, quiet, filled with advance safety technology. The design is gorgeous. The interior execution is outstanding. And it’s all at a price point that offers a great a value.”<\/p>\n

GM’s decision to import the Envision from China — a first for a major automaker — has sparked outrage and is expected to become an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

The United Auto Workers union, which had lobbied to build the Envision in the United States, called the decision to import it from China a “slap in the face” to taxpayers who bailed GM out of bankruptcy in the wake of the financial 2008 crisis.<\/p>\n

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has not yet seized on the issue, but given that he regularly rails against China for stealing American jobs analysts say it’s only a matter of time.<\/p>\n

“I suspect GM is counting on the product to trump the actual Trump,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California who specializes in labor issues and the automotive industry.<\/p>\n

– ‘New era’ –<\/p>\n

General Motors has come a long way since it first tried importing vehicles from a developing nation — Mexico — decades ago and it has systems in place to ensure that the Chinese-built Envision matches both American and global standards, Shaiken said.<\/p>\n

“GM is well aware of how a poor reputation in these early vehicles could have much larger impacts down the road,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n

“This is a major event that opens a new era.”<\/p>\n

It makes good business sense for GM to import the Envision from China: it sold over 1.2 million Buicks in China last year and only 223,000 in the United States.<\/p>\n

While the Envision will help boost those numbers by rounding out Buick’s offerings in the fast-growing crossover segment, it is still only expected to reach sales of about 40,000 vehicles in the near-term.<\/p>\n

“GM’s North America plants are just running full-out: there isn’t a logical place to put that car,” said Stephanie Brinley, an analyst with IHS Automotive.<\/p>\n

“That doesn’t mean that all Buicks will now and forever be built from China, or that General Motors will as a general strategy be bringing vehicles in from China. What it means is that GM has a global footprint and they will use it.”<\/p>\n

Most consumers probably won’t even realize that the Envision was built in China, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst with automotive website Edmunds.com.<\/p>\n

“There may be some balking at first if people want to make an issue of it but I imagine in the long run it won’t be a deal breaker for a lot of people,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n

“If the quality is good, I don’t know if people are necessarily going to care.”<\/p>\n

One reason why it’s taken so long for a major automaker to import vehicles from China is because they’ve been so busy trying to satisfy demand in that fast-growing market, said Jack Nerad, an analyst with Kelly Blue Book.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think we’re going to suddenly see a flood of Chinese-built vehicles but I think we will see a few more,” Nerad said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n

“A Chinese brand is a bigger reach than something with a very familiar label like a Buick label. I don’t know that this market is crying out for new brands.”<\/p>\n

Photo: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

General Motors will be placing a big bet the American public is willing to drive a car built in China when it unveils the Buick Envision on Sunday night. The largest US automaker is certainly not trying to bring it to market quietly: Buick’s latest sport utility vehicle will be introduced at a lavish party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}