Word: kadett
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...auto-savoring European press. The manufacturer's success is owing in large part to the successful redesign of its market-leading subcompact, a car class in which the parent company has produced notable failures like the Chevrolet Chevette. The GM Europe subcompact, which goes by the names Opel Kadett and Vauxhall Astra, is now selling at the rate of 630,000 cars a year, making it the best-selling GM car in the world...
...Asian rivals.) Why, then, has North American GM failed to import more of Opel's technology and know-how? GM executives in Europe tend to shrug at the question and point to the occasional instance of cooperation. Most notable: the Pontiac LeMans, which is in effect an Opel Kadett built in South Korea by Daewoo and shipped to the U.S. "I wouldn't rule out the use of Opel strategically, let's say if we needed a small car in the U.S.," says John Smith Jr., who as president of GM Europe was largely responsible for its turnaround...
...European experience is likely to become stronger in Detroit when Chairman Roger Smith, 64, departs later this year. The leading contender for the job is President Robert Stempel, 56, who as managing director of Opel from 1980 to 1982 gave the green light for the redesign of the successful Kadett. And a likely candidate for the president's job is John Smith, 51, who from 1986 until his repatriation in 1988 was president of GM Europe. The two executives would be likely to push GM toward faster, less centralized decision making. Domestic GM has a long...
...been rather slow in meeting the new need for spartan transportation. While the company was busy promoting its relatively new 1500 fastback sedan, G.M.'s and Ford's German subsidiaries were challenging the beetle at its own game. Sales of G.M.'s small, $1,360 Opel Kadett soared 28% last year, after a 6% drop in 1965. Ford last September successfully reintroduced its $1,322 Taunus 15M, a model it had dropped in 1959. When his 1200 gets into full production, Volkswagen's Nordhoff plans to skip the rich U.S. market, which accounts...
Germany's ten manufacturers showed off 30 basic models that come in 155 different versions, all with higher horsepower than before. Notable among them: Opel's completely restyled fastback Kadett, which borrows some of its lines from the Ford Mustang, and NSU's Spider, the only car in the world powered by the Wankel engine. Twelve companies in the U.S., Britain, France, Italy and Japan are now experimenting with the engine (which was developed in 1954 by Felix Wankel, a German engineer). The Wankel replaces conventional pistons and cylinders with a triangular rotor, has only two major...