Opel And Vauxhall Now Officially Belong To PSA

With all the paperwork signed, sealed and delivered, the ownership of the famous brands has transferred to French hands. The next 100 days will see PSA decide how it's going to manage its new toys

Matt Kimberley

01 Aug 2017

Opel And Vauxhall Now Officially Belong To PSA

PSA’s €2.2 billion purchase of Opel and Vauxhall is legally and officially complete, which sees the two brands join Peugeot, Citroen and DS in a move that will grow a conglomerate to rival the Volkswagen Group.

For the time being and for several years to come, the overlap between Opel/Vauxhall products and those from the French corner will mean that they are all are stealing sales from each other, but PSA has announced a 100-day period during which it will develop a ‘performance plan’ to generate an overall profit by 2020. That means serious cost-cutting.

Although a Vauxhall spokesman told Autocar that it was “business as usual” at the company’s two UK factories, staff at both Ellesmere Port and Luton will have to endure a sweaty-palmed 100 days while waiting for PSA to give them the thumbs-up… or down.

If the company decides that the idea of two factories in a post-Brexit Britain doesn’t really appeal as part of its cost-cutting measures, the UK could be looking at thousands of job losses despite PSA boss Carlos Tavares’ vague promise that Vauxhall will ‘remain British.’

Last year Opel lost £200 million; a trend that will need to be reversed very quickly. Heavy cuts to management staff are expected, while in the medium term it’s only natural to predict that future Opel and Vauxhall cars will be built on the same production lines as Citroens and Peugeots – making certain factories redundant.

The current GM platforms will only need to be replaced as they end their current life cycles, though. The Astra, which is built at Ellesmere Port, is due for replacement in 2021. The jobs there should be safe until then, at least, but while Tavares has said PSA may not need to close any plants, he won’t rule it out, either…

Comments

Hopefully they’ll do it right, french styling with german reliability, not the other way around.

I don’t think “german reliability” is a good term

french styling could go either way as well

I just hope they keep the research center where it is, It is 10 minutes foot walk from my home and I can grab a job there. Plus I am hoping that they don’t screw up with the OPC models as they sold pretty well. They need to cut their low sale models (like vans) and sort out their “hot” models like Astra, Corsa and Insignia.

Opel Astra OPC - A Peugeot 308 GTi for those who don’t want a Peugeot

And the Corsa VXR for those who dont want the 208 GTi?

I’d rather have the Peugeot tbh

Still can’t understand why they did this.

Peugeot and Citroen are already clashing in terms of their audiences, prices etc.

Now they have another brand to add to the mix. Why?!

They should have rather invested into further differentiating DS as a premium brand and diverging Citroen and Peugeot to capture different audiences.

Doesn’t make any sense from the business point of view.

So are Audi/VW/Skoda/SEAT. Just where you go depends on how much cheapness you get for your money

I imagine DS and Vauxhall will more than likely be theyre more ‘premium’ side, whilst the other 2 remain the more generic, everyday cars

The public service announcement?

Soooo Opel and Vauxhall drivers will become… ?

You mean they aren’t already??

If the UK ends up with a good trade deal post-brexit, then Peugeot are sitting on a gold mine. No EU red tape - just build/develop/research in the UK and rake in the money in overseas markets like Latin America and China.

That’s not going to happen. The U.K. couldn’t develop and produce cars which are cheap enough to satisfy the needs for those markets, certainly not considering the inherent costs involved with shipping the cars and parts such a huge distance away.

If the U.K. wants to have a good post-Brexit car market, we need to have a good trade deal with the EU. Most of the cars we manufacture here are exported to the EU already, and trying to break away from that and entering a race-to-the-bottom fight for success in countries like China is just asking for ruination.