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Cadillac and Buick boost GM's return to growth in China

BEIJING — General Motors on Monday said continued market recovery from the COVID-19 crisis helped its China vehicle sales grow 12% on year in July-September, marking the Detroit automaker's first Chinese quarterly sales growth in two years. The second-biggest foreign automaker in China by units — after Germany's Volkswagen AG — said on Monday it had delivered 771,400 vehicles in China in the third quarter. That followed a 5% fall in the second quarter, when parts of China were still emerging from virus-busting lockdown measures. GM has a Shanghai-based joint venture with SAIC making Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles. It has another venture, SGMW, with SAIC and Guangxi Automobile Group, producing no-frills minivans and which has started manufacturing higher-end cars. Sales rose 26% for cars under its mass-market Buick brand in the third quarter versus the same period a year earlier, while those of premium brand Cadillac jumped 28%, GM said in a statement. Sales of its mass-market Chevrolet marque fell 20%. Sales of no-frills brand Wuling grew 26%, whereas those of mass-market Baojun vehicles tumbled 19%. "GM's compact models returned to four-cylinder engines and that helped sales growth," said LMC Automotive senior analyst Alan Kang, referring to an attempt to market cleaner but noisier three-cylinder versions. "Cadillac also has a more complete lineup this year." China's biggest automakers' association expects overall car sales to grow by double digits in July-September versus a year earlier. Makers such as Toyota, Honda and Geely saw sales jump in the just-finished quarter. GM has seen its China sales suffer in a crowded market and slowing economy. To revive its fortunes, it plans to have electric vehicles (EVs) make up over 40% of new models in the next five years in China, where the government promotes greener cars. The automaker's Wuling Hong Guang MINI EV, a micro two-door EV with a starting price of 28,800 yuan ($4,200), was China's biggest-selling EV in August. GM's sales fell 15% in 2019 from a year earlier to 3.09 million vehicles. The automaker delivered 3.65 million vehicles in 2018 and 4.04 million in 2017. Related Video:

Cadillac plans new branding campaign to go with new products

Cadillac's new leader says the GM luxury brand now has "thousands of people" working on its behalf back at its soon-to-be new headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Warren, with a new branding campaign under development and plans to fix longstanding quality issues. Cadillac President Steve Carlisle granted an interview with the Detroit Free Press in which he said he'll unveil a new strategy to redefine the luxury brand, which he's calling a "master brand," in the first quarter of 2019. "Cadillac has its own values — boldness, optimism, innovation, sophistication — that will reflect in the master brand," Carlisle told the outlet. The challenge is "how to bring those to life." He added that Caddy won't be defining itself simply as a viable option to gold-standard Germany luxury cars. "We're targeting customers versus competitors. Cadillac has to have its own persona and not be defined by where other brands are and are not. It has to have its own definition and that's what we're reflecting in our master brand." Carlisle, who was promoted to lead Cadillac in April, put his first stamp on Cadillac last month when the brand announced it will move its headquarters back to Warren, Mich., across the street from GM's massive Tech Center, after more than three years in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. He said its Cadillac House showroom, a ground-floor space used to display models and stage events with partners, will remain open "for the time being" and that the brand will use what it learned well outside of its Detroit auto-industry bubble to move the brand forward. He'll have his work cut out for him. Cadillac plans to launch a new or redesigned vehicle every six months for the next three years, and Carlisle said he wants the brand to be GM's technology leader, the first to deploy self-driving and electric-vehicle technology of GM's stable of brands. Yet the brand just ranked second-from-last in Consumer Reports' new reliability survey for 2018. Jon Linkov, deputy auto editor for CR, said the brand suffered for widespread complaints about its Cadillac User Experience infotainment system, with owners reporting frequent crashes, frozen screens and problems with voice control. "Most of (the complaints) really ran through the CUE system being a major culprit for Cadillacs," Linkov said. Through September, Cadillac's year-to-date sales had dipped a half a percentage point from the first nine months of 2017 to 113,240 units.

de Nysschen pushes to separate Cadillac, GM

Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen continues his push to separate his brand from General Motors. After controversially picking up shop and moving to New York's trendy SoHo neighborhood, de Nysschen has now gone on record as saying that within two years, the brand will enjoy "a far higher degree of autonomy and self sufficiency." That autonomy will include the brand reporting its own financial results, independent of GM. But what would such a move do for Cadillac? Well, as de Nysschen explained it to Automotive News, "Cadillac at this state makes a very sizeable contribution to the overall profit at General Motors." If that's truly the case, separating financial announcements serves to emphasize the prosperous character de Nysschen seems so keen on attaching to his brand. But that's only one phase of Cadillac's push to distance itself from GM. De Nysschen is eager to revamp the company's dealership model so that it stands out from other GM brands, calling it a "very profound focus." Those moves, according to AN, including a change to the current dealer incentive model with a particular emphasis on building the brand rather than nailing sales figures. "If you aren't strengthening the brand perception, you should have less reward," de Nysschen told AN. While his goals seem clear, de Nysschen's statements have left us wondering whether they're also somewhat counterintuitive. Emphasizing Caddy's prosperity to potential consumers while incentivizing dealers to move less metal seems more like a tactical move rather than a strategic one. And there's no telling how the new dealership model will impact de Nysschen's goal to hit 500,000 global sales by 2020. Related Video: