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Will GM's Minicars come to the U.S. After All?

GM Daewoo President & CEO Michael Grimaldi has made some interesting statements recently about the GM minicar concept trio we saw some time back. The same ones that Bob Lutz seemed to soft pedal and discourage enthusiasm regarding - incredibly, just as they were being shown off at NAIAS and we the U.S. public (not people in Korea or China) were asked to vote on them. After all, GM "doesn't speculate on future product" and "doesn't owe us an explanation" of why this or that product might not be arriving in showrooms at some future date. (They just 'slip up' when they tell us a Camaro or Volt is coming years from now...) By contrast, Mr. Grimaldi's statements seem bullish on the minicars, but then again he is the president of GM Daewoo, which would likely be producing or at least engineering the cars, even if Bob's recent appearance on a Fastlane Blog VIDEO CLIP stated "There's no reason that we couldn't produce those cars here," - a hard thing to imagine given the profit margin on every UAW-built Cobalt GM sells (not to mention the fact that the larger-than-Beat Aveo is imported). We've heard folks in the know here say the Beat is a "done deal" for the U.S. market. Is this now becoming the (un)official stance at GM? - Ming

From AutoWeek:

Remember those cool little cars—Trax, Beat and Groove—General Motors showed at the New York show? Michael Grimaldi, president and CEO of GM’s South Korean-based Daewoo Automotive Technology subsidiary, thinks one of those cars, or at least a car like that, will be coming to the United States fairly soon.

Speaking to the Society of Automotive Analysts in Detroit, Grimaldi, a GM vice president, said, “GM doesn’t sell a minicar here in North America because there is no market. If there appears to have been a shift and if we can make those vehicles economically, we can then determine if we should introduce those vehicles here.”

The three concepts were built on Daewoo’s global, Korean-built, small-car chassis that underpins the Chevrolet Spark and the Daewoo Matiz. If GM does end up bringing a minicar to the States, it’s a good bet it will be built either on that chassis or a similar one.

“We are going to see significant changes, in obviously not just GM’s portfolio, but everyone’s products,” Grimaldi said. “It’s going to take a broad comprehensive strategy.”

Grimaldi went on to say that GM expects to invest more than $6.7 billion in Daewoo over the next four years, and that if a minicar is given the green light it could be out in as little as two years as a 2011 model.

SOURCE:
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dl...024/LATESTNEWS