FRANKFURT - General Motors, the world's biggest car maker, said Friday it had chosen its German unit Opel over Swedish subsidiary Saab to make its mid-size cars in future.
"GM has decided to build specific Opel and Saab models, based on a common platform, at (Opel's main site) Ruesselheim from 2008," GM Europe announced in a statement released here.
The auto giant had undertaken an "intensive" analysis of both the Ruesselsheim site just outside Frankfurt and Saab's Trollhaettan plant in Sweden over the past few months.
The analysis was to determine which site offered the best business model that could meet "GM's production demands in Europe in future," the company said.
The study examined each factory in terms of output capacity, investment, labour costs, efficiency, flexibility, logistics and currency.
And while both sites had come up with convincing arguments, "at the end of the day, it was Ruesselsheim that had a slight advantage," GM Europe chairman Fritz Henderson said.
Ruesselsheim had been competing with Saab's Trollhaettan plant to build GM's new mid-size cars in Europe, including Opel's Vectra model and Saab's 9.3, aimed as rivals to BMW's 3-series and Mercedes's C-Class.
Nevertheless, GM Europe remained committed to Saab's Trollhaettan plant, which had been chosen to build the new Cadillac BLS model, being unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show, from 2006.
In addition, Saab cars would continue to built in Trollhaettan "at least until 2010," GM Europe promised.
"We stand by the Saab brand and Sweden as a competitive production site," GM Europe's number two, Carl-Peter Forster, insisted.
03/04/2005 10:59 GMT