Rabenmutter

At Opel, it’s all about the whole thing: Just for the German GM daughter it was better again, because the Americans want to hit them again. How big is the damage this time?

Chronologie: Opels holpriger Weg

Wednesday, 15.02.2017
18:35 clock

The tragedy of the automaker Opel shows up this week Friday in a small room. When it comes to the future of the company, the judges of the district court Darmstadt Opel’s past – in an office, they announce their verdict in a four-year conflict: Has the parent company General Motors (GM) correctly closed the Opel car plant in Bochum or is the decision legally null and void?

For a long time facts have been created. And yet the dispute casts a spotlight on Opel’s dilemma. Just now.

The former Bochum councilor Rainer Einenkel had filed a lawsuit. He accuses the company that the supervisory boards were not sufficiently informed about the end of the work in Bochum. It sounds no different than the criticism of GM today, the German daughter had been left in the dark about her possible sale to PSA Peugeot Citroën until Tuesday,

The complaint in Darmstadt and the new sales plans demonstrate Opel’s misery: In Germany, no one has anything to say about the future of 1862 founded in Rüsselsheim automaker since the Americans took over the majority in 1929.

Just as Opel once stood for Bochum and today for Rüsselsheim, so it says Volkswagen for his headquarters Wolfsburg – Berlin is not far away. The policy even speaks directly to the largest European carmaker through the 20 percent share of Lower Saxony in the supervisory board. Opel’s rulers, however, are in distant Detroit. In years of ups and downs of the company, the Opelaner and German politicians are damned to watch.

Tactics of big words

The pain is deep. Opel employees in Bochum saw the closure of their plant in 2014 like an amputation. There are still more than 1000 of the Opel workers there without work, complains the works council. From the traditional work on a former colliery ground remained only a Warenverteilzentrum. The Bochum factory, the second after the headquarters in Rüsselsheim, was once the pride of the company with around 22,000 jobs. Opel built cars there for 52 years.

Is Rüsselsheim now following? This question adds fear to the German GM subsidiary. The bigger verbal guns, the policy is now on, as GM considers the sale of Opel to the French manufacturer PSA. Nothing is decided yet, but Federal Minister of Economics Brigitte Zypries accused the corporations in a slightly diplomatic snap shot that their talks were “completely unacceptable” because they would be run without works councils or the state government in Hesse. GM did not inform the federal government itself. At least the development center must stay in Germany.

The Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Economic Affairs Volker Wissing (FDP) grabbed one more thing: He expected a commitment to the German sites, offer his full support. “I’m ready to give the potential buyer a fair chance,” said Wissing, as if he could decide on a sale.

Opel production in Europe

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design center

    
 Plant, design and development

Enervating Dodge Course

GM’s sales plans remind Opel of its own powerlessness. If the Americans give away their German daughter, thousands of jobs are at stake in this country. Because PSA has even inefficient factories. As is often the case in Opel’s story, in which Americans have repeatedly torpedoed progress in Germany. This makes the situation now so difficult bearable for the employees of the brand with the flash.

In the 1950s and 1960s Opel drove technically at a height with VW, was in his call BMW and Mercedes hardly after. But whenever Opel thrived, GM was short of money for important investments to use elsewhere in the corporation. Thus, two decades later, the Americans choked off Opel’s good run. The brand lacked a small car, the once successful cadet chugged the VW Golf technically behind, other models made for a Biedermannimage. In 2000, Opel slipped into losses. Opel was not allowed to serve the lucrative market in China because GM wanted to sell American vehicles there.

When the brand had just rallied, good models and cheaper costs through synergies managed, GM stopped just promising series of vehicles again. The group shied away from investments. He saved just where it hurt Opel especially – the quality. The ruined Opel’s image completely.

Such a back and forth has arisen between GM and Opel that the company can not even say straight away due to the complex accounting between parent company and daughter, whether Opel 1999 for the last time showed a year’s profit or even 2006, as it had at least publicly announced one ,

Sometimes GM invested in Opel, sometimes pulled off the group development performance, success and failure of the German subsidiary can be over the years hardly clear.

The hope stifled again

When GM threatened to bankrupt in 2008, Opel even had to swallow a portion of the group losses from America. The group also urged the federal government in the year to state aid to secure the future of the German subsidiary. And not only that: One year later, GM was already trying to sell the brand to the Austrian-Canadian supplier and contract manufacturer Magna. Many Opelans would have been happy to get away from their hated mother.

Just new hope germinated at Opel. By 2020, the manufacturer wants to launch a total of 29 new vehicles and 17 new engines on the market. With the new Astra, the brand succeeded in making its compact model attractive again. Almost in 2016, Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann managed to return to an annual profit, had not the withdrawal from the weakening market in Russia and the planned UK exit from the EU, where the Opel sister brand Vauxhall is now weakened, hard hit the office.

With the sales plans, GM is again torpedoing the beginning of Opel’s upswing, instead of using it for itself. This stop-and-go traffic wastes more energy than car companies can afford in the current difficult market conditions. The alliance with a major automaker in Europe, which ended Opel’s lonely fighter existence, could finally ensure stable profits through the larger vehicle range. The jobs in Rüsselsheim – that is the tragedy behind it – are likely to suffer again in the face of protectionism in France.

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