Despite the tangled nature of Opel and Buick, General Motors? impending sale of Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group will not affect the U.S. brand?s cars and SUVs, General Motors executives said Tuesday at the unveiling of new Opel-based Regal models in suburban Detroit.
?The sale of Opel will have no impact on the fresh new lineup Buick is building out,? Duncan Aldred, GM’s vice president of global Buick and GMC, said before unveiling the 2018 Regals named the Sportback and the TourX. They’ll be built at Opel’s Rüsselsheim, Germany, plant, which is among six assembly plants, five component-manufacturing facilities, and an engineering center that are included in the $2.3 billion sale of GM?s European assets to the French maker of Peugeots and Citroëns. ?This is very much part of our portfolio plan,? explained Mark Reuss, GM’s executive vice president of global product development, purchasing, and supply chain. ?As we said, Opel and the engineering/production piece of this is very much intact for all of our global platforms. So, you know, no impact.?
Later, Reuss was asked if GM would have to pay PSA for future engineering work done at Opel; he replied that he was not sure of a specific agreement yet and noted that those kinds of operations are ?pretty integrated.? He said there are component- and vehicle-related pieces to the deal that are now being sorted out.
?When we look to close the deal, we’ll have all those things in place,? Reuss s...