General Motors Co (GM) is placing a big bet the US public is willing to drive a car built in China with the Buick Envision — which was sheduled to be unveiled yesterday night.
The largest US automaker is certainly not trying to bring it to the market quietly: Buick’s latest sport utility vehicle was set to be introduced at a lavish party on the eve of the Detroit Auto Show in the hopes of maximizing media coverage.
“We expect it to be a great success,” General Motors Cadillac advertising and sales promotion director Molly Peck told reporters. “It offers all the features and amenities of a luxury SUV [sport utility vehicle]. 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.”
GM’s decision to import the Envision from China — a first for a major US automaker — has sparked outrage and is expected to become an issue in the US presidential campaign.
The United Auto Workers union, which had lobbied to build the Envision in the US, 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 2008 financial crisis.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has not yet seized on the issue, but given that he regularly rails against China for stealing US jobs analysts said it is only a matter of time.
“I suspect GM is counting on the product to trump the actual Trump,” said University of California professor Harley Shaiken, who specializes in labor issues and the automotive industry.
GM 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 US and global standards, Shaiken said.
“GM is well aware of how a poor reputation in these early vehicles could have much larger impacts down the road,” he told reporters. “This is a major event that opens a new era.”
It makes good business sense for GM to import the Envision from China: It sold more than 1.2 million Buicks in China last year and only 223,000 in the US.
While the Envision would 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.
“GM’s North America plants are just running full-out — there isn’t a logical place to put that car,” IHS Automotive analyst Stephanie Brinley said. “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.”
Most consumers probably would not even realize that the Envision was built in China, automotive Web site Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell said.
“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 reporters. “If the quality is good, I don’t know if people are necessarily going to care.”
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