GM South Africa May 2008 Sales Results

[patrickbec]

General Motors South Africa May 2008 Sales:

CADILLAC BLS 21
CADILLAC SRX 2
CADILLAC STS 3

CHEV Aveo 235
CHEV Captiva 179
CHEV Lumina 14
CHEV Optra 3
CHEV Spark 326
HUMMER H3 42
OPEL Astra/GTC 128
OPEL Corsa 812
OPEL Meriva 20
OPEL Zafira 42
SAAB 9-3 17
SAAB 9-5 1

Source: http://www.cartoday.com/content/News/naamsa.pdf

[Kennyboy]

Investing all that capital into building a HUMMER plant in South Africa and it means nothing when you have smoldered sales. Hopefully there will be a much smaller HUMMER coming around.

[Carver]

^^ I didn't know there was a HUMMER plant there. BMW also builds a lot of its right-hand drive vehicles there. It's sound like production of HUMMERs for South Africa just started a few months ago.

Hummer SA starts rolling


10 October 2006 General Motors began the first production outside the United States of the Hummer H3 sports utility vehicle at a plant in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on Tuesday.
GM said it expected eventually to produce more than 10 000 units of the H3, the newest and smallest model in the Hummer range, for export to Europe, the Middle East and Asia under a US$3-billion contract awarded to its South African subsidiary in April 2005.
Production of a right-hand drive version, for export into right-hand markets in Europe and Asia as well as for local sale, will begin at GMSA's Struandale, Port Elizabeth plant in the second quarter of 2007.
"The GM team in South Africa has demonstrated to the world that they have the people, the leadership, the technology and the skills to execute the type of automobile engineering and assembly that is required in the new global economy," Maureen Kempston Darkes, president of GM Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, said in a statement on Tuesday

http://www.southafrica.info/business...mer-101006.htm

[t-rex]

Originally Posted by Carver

^^ I didn't know there was a HUMMER plant there. BMW also builds a lot of its right-hand drive vehicles there. It's sound like production of HUMMERs for South Africa just started a few months ago.
http://www.southafrica.info/business...mer-101006.htm

GM's Struandale plant in Port Elizabeth supplies all the Hummer H3's sold in the Eastern Hemisphere. It also assembles the Isuzu KB-series pickup (D-Max) from Thai CKD packs. The Struandale plant was bought from Ford (who opened the plant in 1973 to build the wildly successful Cortina) in the early 1990s to assemble the Opel Corsa for SA.

BMW South Africa supply all the world's RHD 3-series sedans.

Mercedes source all their RHD C-class sedans from East London.

Nissan have no export contracts outside of a few sales in sub-Saharan Africa. Its only product (as far as I know) is the last-gen Nissan pickup.

Corollas built at Prospecton, near Durban, are exported, but I'm unsure where. I believe they go to Britain and Ireland, with Turkey supplying European LHD Corollas. Not sure if the new Corolla is being sent to Australia or not. TSA also build the Hilux and Fortuner, and I believe the SA Hiluxes are exported to Europe.

Ford supply some SA-built Focuses to Australia/NZ, and the Silverton plant near Pretoria (originally a Chrysler plant) is tapped to be a global supplier of the next-gen global Ranger. I don't know if any of the Mazda3's assembled there are exported.

VW build all the world's RHD Golfs and Jettas in Uitenhage, near Port Elizabeth (the plant was originally built by Studebaker, who, strangely, built VW's for the SA market). It all the RHD Polo Sedans to wherever needed, and some Polo hatchbacks are shipped to Australia and New Zealand. Uitenhage also builds the Citi Golf, an updated version of the original Golf/Rabbit, fitted oddly enough with the Skoda Fabia's dashboard! Despite its age, it's regularly a top-3 seller in South Africa because of its low price and bulletproof reputation.

Things are so much different there than when I was a boy, when we had 18 assembly plants in the country assembling a bewildering array of makes and models, all for local consumption. SA-built cars had atrocious build quality, because makers were building for a captive market. Imports cost us twice what they did elsewhere because of tariffs. South Africans were voracious consumers of cars and carmakers exploited this to the fullest, building some the crappiest-made cars seen outside of the Soviet Union.

They had to get their collective acts together to win the lucrative export contracts needed once that import tariffs dropped to nominal levels.

[Patto1]

Australia sells more than double the number of Hummer H3's than South Africa and that's where they are imported from.

[RedVee8]

How big is the South Affrican market in yearly sales?

[brenn26]

An update on the GMSA Sales - June 2008
Passenger SA EXPORT
CADILLAC BLS 4
CADILLAC SRX 2
CHEV Aveo 362 3
CHEV Captiva 143 2
CHEV Lumina 12 0
CHEV Optra 25 0
CHEV Spark 470 0
HUMMER H3 33 127
OPEL Astra/GTC 124 0
OPEL Corsa 707 0
OPEL Meriva 17 0
OPEL Tigra 1 0
OPEL Zafira 39 0
SAAB 9-3 3 0
SAAB 9-5 1 0
LCV <3501 kg
CHEV Lumina 10 0
ISUZU KB 1,407 266
OPEL Combo 9 0
OPEL Corsa Utility 1,742 10
OPEL Vivaro 31 0
MCV 3501 -8500 kg
ISUZU F-Series 132 2
HCV 8501 - 16500 kg
ISUZU F-Series 142 2
Extra HCV >16501
ISUZU F-Series 51 0