GM Brazil’s Launch of Chevy Cruze Begins Product Offensive
The Chevy Cobalt subcompact also bows in Brazil this month. A third new product comes in January and six more vehicles in 2012, for nine fresh entries over 18 months.
General Motors begins selling the Chevrolet Cruze in Brazil this month, the first vehicle in a 9-product offensive over the next 18 months aimed at recapturing lost market share and perhaps overtaking local sales leaders Fiat and Volkswagen.
“The initial reaction is very, very good,” says Jaime Ardila, president of GM South America. “Expectations are very high.”
Chevy Cruze launches in Brazil, beginning GM product push in region.
If the Cruze’s performance in other markets around the world serves as any indication, it should prove popular in Brazil, where a surge in the middle class led to a doubling of annual vehicle sales between 2005 and 2010.
Brazil vehicle sales totaled 312,302 units for September, WardsAuto data shows, and accounted for 3.6 million total deliveries last year.
The Cruze launched in global markets outside the U.S. in spring 2009 and recently eclipsed 1 million sales worldwide. It went on sale in the U.S. last year and now ranks as the best-selling car in its segment in the region.
In Brazil, the Cruze bows as a sedan with a 1.8L 4-cyl. engine. A 5-door hatchback model arrives next year. It is built locally, with a majority of parts sourced from Asia, although that will change in the coming months, Ardila says.
“We will be accelerating the localization, as we do with other products, by the first year or two,” he tells WardsAuto in a recent telephone interview from Sao Paolo. “By 2013, it should be 70% to 80% local, which we have for most of our products.”
Through September, GM claimed 18.4% of the Brazilian market on sales of 464,508 light vehicles. Last year, the auto maker had a 19.8% market share on 657,622 deliveries, according to WardsAuto data.
The Chevy Cobalt subcompact also will bow in Brazil this month. The car bears no relation to the Cobalt sold in the U.S. during the last decade. A third new product comes to the market in January and six more in 2012, for nine fresh entries over 18 months.
“That makes us reasonably confident that we can pick up a little share next year,” Ardila says.
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