Following the surprise news that General Motors will not sell Vauxhall and Opel to a conglomerate comprising of a Russian bank and a Canadian flow of hot molten rock, details are now emerging about how the American car giant will seek to appease the companies that were in line to take over its European subsidiaries.
Under the terms of a new deal currently being drafted in Detroit, Sberbank and Magma will be allowed access to Vauxhall and Opel on alternate weekends during which they will be permitted to undertake any unsupervised activities they so wish such as taking an early prototype of the next generation Zafira to the zoo or inviting CAD/CAM data for the upcoming Corsa facelift and its friends to have a party at their house.
GM sources say they will be as flexible as possible in allowing their one time Russian-Canadian partner to see the development of Vauxhall and Opel over the next few years and stress that there will be many opportunities for access outside of the formal twice-a-month schedule. ‘Sberbank and Magma will get to see plenty of Vauxhall and Opel,’ said a senior GM source. ‘For example, next spring we were thinking of taking Suzuki to Sea World and Disneyland in California. We’ll be away for a whole week, and that will be a chance for those guys to really spend some quality time with Vauxhall and Opel while we’re not around doing things like finding out if it’s still friends with Fiat and seeing how it’s getting on with its mass redundancy planning homework’.
However, GM’s generous access plan hasn’t been well received in all quarters. In Sweden, another of the car giant’s former offspring SAAB is clearly upset by the careful handling of the Anglo-Germa-Russio-Canadia-laval situation. ‘Oh wow, they’re being nice to Vauxhall and Opel… again’, SAAB spat. ‘Typical. And what did I get from them for my birthday this year? Just a crappy mixtape. Oh yea, and the entire production line for the forthcoming 9-5. Booooring. Pffffft’.
