Opel Astra will be assembled in Russia

Although the statement of AvtoVAZ chairman Vladimir Kadannikov, in which he talked about the agreement reached with General Motors has an agreement in principle on the deployment of vehicle assembly in Russia, Opel Astra, manual GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture has decided otherwise. After long discussions, the prospects of this project with specialists from General Motors executives have decided to venture to abandon the idea. According to them, the joint venture should focus on increasing production volumes SUV Chevrolet Niva, said the publication Gazette. In addition, representatives from the American company does not share the optimism of the Volga automobile plant in the outlook of this car in the Russian market. At the moment, quite happy with sales of GM cars in Russia the German Opel Astra build and see no reason to deploy the assembly of this model in our country. All the more so for the first quarter of 2003 in the CIS was implemented 1011 Car Opel. Head of "GM-AvtoVAZ" John Mylonas also stated that "The joint venture will produce cars only with the brand Chevrolet. We considered the possibility of building on the capacities of Opel Astra, as well as several other models of Opel, but refused to do." According to him, the joint venture will continue to increase production of SUVs Chevrolet Niva and develop export this car to foreign markets. It is planned that the SUV in the export version will be available on some European markets, but also that it is possible in South America and even Asia. Meanwhile, an analyst with UFG, Elena Sakhnova can not explain the decision to abandon manual JV build low-cost model Opel Astra in Russia. Especially because a classmate of the car, Ford Focus assembled in Russia, our country enjoys in the increased demand. Americans are either wary of or believe in such an assembly SUVs superuspeshnym project that they intend to take them all the power of the joint venture, not allocating 15% of cars are under production for the middle class, as previously assumed, - says Elena Sakhnova.