The ‘made in China’ is driving sales of General Motors in Mexico. The list of Chinese-made models, which are sold with the logos of the American giant’s brands, has grown in the last five years. The Aveo, Cavalier, Groove, Captiva, Tornado Van and the S10 pickup family are assembled in plants shared with Chinese automaker SAIC Motor.
All these vehicles have arrived in Mexico with the Chevrolet logo, the brand that generates the most volume for General Motors: between January and July, they represented 61% of its total sales, according to Inegi data.
“It is the advantage of General Motors: being a global company that can decide where to produce vehicles, depending on market demand,” said Héctor Villarreal, vice president of Sales, Service and Marketing for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, in a Interview conducted in June.
Since 2019, the American automaker has ended the production of all its small models, both sedans and hatchbacks and citycars , to focus on the most profitable vehicles -pickups and SUVs-, and on
In Mexico, the first to be discontinued was the Aveo, which was made in San Luis Potosí. Then followed the Sonic and Cruze models, also of Mexican manufacture. Last year, General Motors announced that it would stop selling the Beat and Spark models that were made at two Asian plants.
In February, General Motors said it would move production of the Onix model from Mexico to China. This with the aim of expanding the production volume of the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain SUVs, which are successfully sold in the United States.
Brand directors confirmed to Expansión in early June that a new Onix, of which just over 10,000 units have been sold in Mexico this year, will soon arrive imported from China.
Unlike other American brands, such as Ford or Chrysler, which have followed a similar path and removed their sedan offerings from their websites to focus on larger models, General Motors has used Chinese-made vehicles to maintain a range of models. subcompacts and compacts in specific markets.
The strategy has worked well, in terms of sales, for the American manufacturer: it has made it easier for it to compete in high-volume segments with competitive prices and to maintain a constant flow of inventory.
This, in turn, has allowed General Motors to increase its market share to 15% from 11% in 2021, and even reduce the gap against Nissan, the best-selling brand in the Mexican market for 13 years, according to data. from AMDA.
“We are going to continue launching products and we believe that by the second half of the year we will have greater availability of units,” said Villarreal.
This week, the Chinese portal released photos of the start of production of a new hatchback vehicle at the SAIC-Wuling factory in China, of which there will also be a sedan variant. This vehicle, identified for now as the 310C HB, will join the list of Chevrolet models developed by the Chinese subsidiary of General Motors for emerging markets. Mexico among them.
