FRANKFURT -- General Motors' Opel unit said today it will build a Buick model for the United States at its plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany.
Opel said production would begin in the ''second half of the decade'' without naming the model. Opel currently produces the Insignia mid-sized sedan, which shares the same underpinnings as the Buick Regal, at the Ruesselsheim factory near Frankfurt.
Opel also said it will stop exporting vehicles to China in January 2015.
Opel will invest 245 million euros ($336.62 million) to build a new model in Ruesselsheim, the company also said today. It will annouce details of the model before the end of the year.
"With the investment in a new, additional model for Ruesselsheim, we will take another important step in our multi-billion dollar model offensive with which we will pave the way for Opel’s profitable growth," GM President and Opel Supervisory Board Chairman Dan Ammann said in a statement.
Opel said its supervisory board had also given the go ahead for future production of an additional variant of the Insignia. In 2015, it will also add output of the Zafira Tourer minivan at Ruesselsheim.
China costs
The company said it had decided to stop plans to expand in China because such a step would cost a triple-digit million amount. Opel sold only 4,365 cars in China last year, compared with Buick, which sold 810,000 cars.
"This is a long overdue decision," Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann said in the statement. "It would have cost hundreds of millions of euros to raise awareness of the Opel brand [in China] and to expand the distribution network."
The move builds on GM's global reorganization of its brands worldwide. In December, GM said it would pull its Chevrolet brand out of Europe and that its Holden unit would stop manufacturing cars in Australia.
Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this report
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