Automotive News Europe - September 2011 - 106

Q A
&
WAYNE BRANNON

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

ANNIVERSARY

CHEVROLET’S BIG CHALLENGE
General Motors division has seven new product launches as it targets growth in Europe

hevrolet, which celebrates its centennial this year, has enjoyed success in Europe by selling affordable Koreanbuilt small cars – but now the brand wants to win even more buyers. The General Motors division has seven new launches this year in a product offensive that will propel the brand into new segments and send a message to competitors that it means business when it talks about doubling its annual European sales, including Russia, to 1 million. Chevrolet Europe Managing Director Wayne Brannon talked about the brand's ambitions with Automotive News Europe Editor-inChief Harald Hamprecht.
What is the relevance of Europe for Chevrolet’s global sales?

range extender will be at European dealerships. If you visit a Chevrolet showroom toward the end of the year, you won't find a model that's more than 2 years old.
How do you plan to further increase your portfolio?

By the end of this year, we will be offering 12 models. With this portfolio, we will cover about 50 percent of the market segments. And of course we would like to further increase the number. At the Frankfurt auto show we will show the new Malibu, which will be in Europe in 2012, and the Colorado show truck. We are also mulling over a couple of other variants of our existing models. Ideally, we want to be present in two-thirds of the market.
What is the size of your dealer network in Europe?

MEET THE BOSS

Chevrolet Europe’s sales accounted for 11.3 percent of global Chevrolet sales in 2010. Chevrolet is doing really well there. We expect a fairly ambitious increase in share growth here, but we just won’t have the increase in market size like the emerging countries like China, India.
What are your greatest challenges?

Wayne Brannon, 56, is a veteran General Motors executive who had a varied global career before being named Chevrolet Europe head in 2006. The Detroit-born executive began his GM career in 1973 with Cadillac. After 15 years with GM's luxury brand, he had a stint in corporate marketing and planning before being appointed as GM's sales and marketing director for Africa. Before moving to Zurich to lead Chevrolet's European operations, he was head of sales and marketing for GM Latin America, Africa and Middle East.

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Our biggest challenge is that many people still don't know us. Chevrolet was relaunched in Europe in 2005 with a new lineup of mini, small and compact cars. Only about 5 percent of customers know the car models we offer and naturally only a selection of those put us on their consideration list. The good news is that we will be selling more than 500,000 cars across Europe this year, despite such low awareness.
In 2011, you are launching seven new cars in one year.

We have about 2,000 dealer outlets throughout Europe. Over the next couple of years, we may plug some geographical gaps, but we do not necessarily need more stores to accomplish our volume growth. The dealers will have more space available for our growing portfolio. More refinement is our message, as we get in touch with new customer groups.
How many of your sports cars will you sell across Europe?

double our sales again, to 1 million cars. The 2016 time frame could still be a fair date for this goal.
Your competitors, especially from Asia, have ambitious sales goals as well.

Currently we plan to sell between 1,000 and 1,500 Corvettes across Europe. On top, we will sell about 2,000 Camaros.
What plans do you have for the Volt?

We expect to sell between 1,000 and 2,000 Volts in a full year across Europe.
What is your overall mid-term sales goal?

Yes! What better way to celebrate our 100th anniversary as a brand than to launch seven new cars in one year? Especially as we are entering new segments, like with the Orlando seven-seat family van, which has been available since February. The new Captiva SUV has been at dealers since April with new engines. In July, we launched the all-new Aveo. Now we are presenting the Cruze hatchback. In November, the new Corvette Grand Sport, Camaro coupe and convertible and the Volt electric car with

The development of one of our Japanese competitors from a 1.5 percent to a 5 percent share took about 10 years. We have been on that track for the last five to six years. Our mid-term goal is a 4 percent to 5 percent market share in Europe after 2.5 percent in 2010. I am still optimistic that we can achieve that, but we want to grow profitably. My target is to move our unaided awareness closer to the levels that our competitors enjoy, from below 10 percent to above 20 percent.
Will there be European production sites for Chevrolet in the future?

When Chevrolet was relaunched in Europe in 2005, we doubled our business to over 500,000 units of annual sales within three years. Last year, we sold 477,194 in 35 European countries including Russia and Turkey. This year it will be roughly half a million again. And I have always said once the recession is over, and we are not quite there yet, it will take another five years to

We have production in Russia (GM plant in St. Petersburg; joint venture production in Togliatti; next year with GAZ in Nizhny Novogorod) and in Uzbekistan, for the local markets. There are no immediate plans to build Chevrolet cars at GM plants in western and central Europe. Let’s see what the future brings. ■

❙ For the complete Wayne Brannon interview go to europe.autonews.com/brannonexecedition ❙ 106
ANE EXECUTIVE EDITION SEPTEMBER 2011

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