GM retreats from more overseas battlefields

General Motors is continuing its overseas retreat, shelving its Holden brand in Australia and New Zealand and completely pulling out of Thailand.

The shake-up announced last week amplifies a downsizing that has seen the Detroit automaker pare down operations in Western Europe, Russia, India, Africa and beyond in recent years to focus on more rewarding markets.

The result is a GM more dependent than ever on the U.S., China, Latin America and South Korea.

"GM really set this in motion a few years ago when Mary Barra said we are going to focus on profitability more than market share or volume," said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Autotrader.

"GM is not going to be everything to everyone in every market of the world."

GM's fallback comes as Japanese and South Korean competitors, led by Toyota Motor Corp. and Hyundai Motor Co., are expanding in emerging markets and new Chinese rivals are joining the fray.

GM is selling off its plants in India and Thailand to an aspiring Chinese competitor.

In Australia and New Zealand, GM will kill off the Holden brand by 2021. Holden operates only in these countries; most automakers focus on global brands, Krebs said.

Holden, known for its snarling lion logo, was established in 1856 as a saddle maker and joined the GM constellation in 1931. GM pulled the plug on local production in 2017 and tried to continue as an import player. But Holden sales tumbled 25 percent to just 55,201 vehicles in 2019.

In Australia, a shrinking GM will now shift to selling premium specialty vehicles in niche volumes. That plan is still taking shape, GM says, but possible products include pickups, sporty cars such as the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro, or luxury nameplates from Cadillac.

Such a strategy would mirror GM's playbook in markets such as Japan, where GM has abandoned any pretense of pursuing volume.

Combined sales in Japan of the Chevrolet and Cadillac brands fell 30 percent to just 1,064 vehicles in 2019 as the company focused on higher-margin premium nameplates. Chevrolet, for instance, sells only the Corvette and Camaro in Japan.

But Barra's small-is-beautiful approach can sometimes strike it big.

In Japan last month, Chevrolet received 300 preorders for the new, midengine Corvette in just two and a half days when it began taking hand-raisers. Deliveries won't even start there until spring 2021.

In Thailand, GM will sell its only assembly plant to China's Great Wall Motor Co., completely exit production and end sales in the country by the end of this year.

GM's Rayong plant makes the Colorado midsize pickup and a derivative body-on-frame SUV called the TrailBlazer, which is unrelated to the smaller Blazer crossover sold stateside.

GM employs 1,500 people in Thailand and 800 in Australia and New Zealand.

Thailand was an important pickup market decades ago, but "it has become less important as we look at today and the future," observed Jeff Schuster, president of the Americas and global vehicle forecasting for LMC Automotive. GM's plant there was underutilized, he added.

And besides, reasons Stephanie Brinley, analyst at IHS Markit, if GM thought exiting Thailand would hurt global pickup sales, the automaker wouldn't do it. According to IHS, GM built about 37,000 Colorado pickups in Thailand last year.

"They're making the best decisions they can," she said.

GM was the world's biggest carmaker for almost 80 years before losing the sales crown to Toyota in 2008. Since the Great Recession, GM has gradually stepped back from numerous international markets as part of a strategy to focus on profits over volume. In doing so, it has ceded ground to archrivals Volkswagen and Toyota.

Last year, VW Group finished first with worldwide sales of 10.97 million vehicles. Toyota was No. 2 with 10.74 million. GM, meanwhile, notched global volume of 7.72 million units in 2019.

In 2017, America's top automaker also ended sales in India, the world's fourth-largest auto market. It announced just last month it would sell its Talegaon assembly plant there, also to Great Wall.

In 2017, GM also sold its Opel and Vauxhall operations in Europe to Peugeot and said it would stop building vehicles in South Africa. That followed a 2015 move to idle its plant in St. Petersburg, Russia, and end Chevrolet sales in Europe. GM Europe sold just 3,590 vehicles last year.

China and South Korea remain GM's two main engines in Asia. But with the China market now sputtering, GM sales there slid 15 percent to 3.09 million last year.

The U.S. carmaker closed one of its three plants in South Korea last year as local sales fell 18 percent and its Korea-made export shipments slid 7.8 percent.

Hannah Lutz contributed to this report.