GM Begins Production of Adam Model

GM began manufacturing the Adam small car, a vehicle aimed at bringing back European customers amid the recession.

Opel invested 190 million euro ($248 million)in its Eisenach plant in Germany, where Adam is manufactured together with the Corsa hatchback. GM hopes to bring sales to break-even in Europe by 2015 after it has sold $17.3 billion in this market since 1999. Opel and Vauxhall’s market share has dropped 6.7% during the first eleven months of 2012, from 8.4% in 2007.

“The Adam plays an important role as a sign of life for the Opel brand,” said Christoph Stuermer, a Frankfurt-based analyst at IHS Automotive research company. “From a volume point of view, the Corsa is much more important,” with Opel likely to sell one Adam for every 10 deliveries of the older model.

Adam’s price will begin at 11.500 euro in Germany, compared with 9,975 euro for VW Up! City entry-level version and 11,600 euro for Fiat 500 retro-designed model. Adam will hit showrooms on January 19th and Opel said it already has 16,000 ore-orders for the model.

GM encourages customers to order the vehicle from dealers and not buy it on the spot as they have 61,000 exterior and 82,000 interior design combinations to choose from, varying from color to materials, lighting and external parts options.