PSA platforms to provide easier ride for Vauxhall-opel
VAUXHALL AND OPEL will find it much easier to develop new models sharing platforms with the PSA Group than it did with General Motors, according to design boss Mark Adams.
“We have a much better toolkit to work with, because PSA platforms are designed for Europe,” he said.
Under GM ownership, Vauxhall-opel was sharing designs and structures with American brands that often required bigger models built to a lower price, and this tension has been cited as one reason why Vauxhall-opel struggled to make a profit. Besides the differences in size, price and quality, models shared across Europe and the US also had to be designed to meet differing emission and crash regulations across the two continents. That will no longer apply, at least in the near to medium term, with all PSA products being primarily engineered for the European market.
The Vauxhall-opel design department is being left to carry on as before, added Adams. The German operation is already used to working with PSA because it has collaborated on models over the past few years, as evidenced by the PSA platform-based Grandland X, which was conceived before the group’s purchase of Vauxhall-opel.
Under PSA stewardship, Vauxhall-opel will remain true to the “sculptural artistry meets German precision” mantra (or ‘technical precision’ in the case of Vauxhall) . However, Adams has subtly altered the emphasis by rewording the phrase so it now reads “German/technical precision meets sculptural artistry”.