GM Korea: Тарихы мен дамуы

South Korean subsidiary of General Motors

GM Korea Company is the South Korean subsidiary of multinational corporation General Motors and the third largest automobile manufacturer in South Korea. GM Korea's roots go back to the former Daewoo Motors vehicle brand, which was split from its parent company, Daewoo Group, in 2002. The remaining equity stake of 33.3% was held by Korea Development Bank and several other Korean creditors with investments of US$197 million. The deal did not include 15 plants, including Daewoo's oldest plant in Bupyeong gu which is now operated under the name Incheon Motor Company as a supplier to GM Daewoo. In 2004, Tata Motors purchased Daewoo Commercial Vehicle, which had been spun out of bankrupt Daewoo Motor Co. in 2002. In February 2005, GM invested US$49 million to raise its share in the company to 48.2%. In 2010, General Motors owned 82.9%, SAIC 9.9%, and the Daewoo Motor Creditors Committee the remaining 7.2%. On 25 November 2003, the design center was relocated to the new two story building at the Bupyeong gu headquarters. The first car to be produced under the GM Daewoo nameplate was the 2002 Daewoo Lacetti, replacing the Nubira. This car was developed in South Korea under the Daewoo Motor era, but it gradually became a GM world car, sold under many different marques all around the globe. After a few years without any new cars to present, in 2005, GM Daewoo introduced the Holden based Statesman luxury car replacing the discontinued Daewoo Chairman. The third generation of Matiz was introduced, refreshed by the GM Daewoo design team, and an evolution of the four door Kalos appeared: the Gentra. In early 2006, GM Daewoo presented Tosca, the replacement of the Magnus. GM Daewoo's official press releases says that Tosca is an acronym for "Tomorrow Standard Car". The end of the same year, GM Daewoo introduced the Winstorm, its first proper sport utility vehicle (SUV), which was, as the Lacetti, sold worldwide under different brands and names including Opel Antara, Chevrolet Captiva and Holden Captiva, and previously Saturn Vue before the demise of the Saturn brand in 2010. It featured a common rail Diesel engine for the first time in a Daewoo vehicle, in addition to regular four and six cylinder gasoline engines. The diesel engine design was licensed from the Italian engine maker VM Motori. 2007 saw the introduction of the Lacetti and Kalos hatchback facelift's wagon version, becoming the Gentra X. For 2008, GM Daewoo introduced the first Korean branded roadster: the G2X sports car, a badge engineered Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky which was based on the GM Kappa platform, and started to sell the Opel Antara under the name of Winstorm MaXX. The Statesman flagship was also replaced by the new Veritas which is now based on the Holden Caprice V. In 2008, GM Korea built more than 1.9 million vehicles, including CKD products. Late 2008 and early 2009 were a major period for GM Daewoo with the introduction of the all new Lacetti Premiere, which is based on the Chevrolet Cruze, a very important compact car for GM divisions worldwide. The newly rechristened third generation of the Matiz was added to the range in 2009 as the Chevrolet Spark. 2010 saw the introduction of the Chevrolet Orlando and Alpheon, a local version of the Buick LaCrosse.

On 20 January 2011, General Motors announced that GM Daewoo would be renamed GM Korea "to reflect Daewoo's heightened status in the global operations of GM", effective March 2011. Most of the remaining Daewoo vehicles were rebadged as Chevrolets, although the Damas/Labo microtrucks were sold without a brand name since 2011. GM's luxury division Cadillac entered South Korea in 1996 and, with a record sales year of 28,000 units in 2017, South Korea became the fifth largest market for Cadillac worldwide (after China, the United States, Canada and the Middle East). In 2011, the Daewoo Tosca was replaced by a locally built version of the Chevrolet Malibu. More recently, the low annual incomes a result of lower levels of sales, led to closing the non profitable factories of the GM Korea unit.

Starting from 2014, GM halted sales of all Chevrolet branded cars in Europe, India, East and South Africa, most of which had up to then been manufactured completely or in part by GM Korea. In 2017, General Motors finalized its move out of the European market by selling the Opel and Vauxhall brands to PSA Group (now part of Stellantis). This caused closure of GM Korea's Gunsan plant due to low productivity. The GM Vietnam vehicle assembly plant in Hanoi, which was managed by GM Korea, was sold to VinFast in 2018. In 2019, GM Korea split its R&D unit, GM Technical Center Korea (GMTCK), into a separate firm despite protests by unions worried about potential layoffs at factories. General Motors announced on 16 February 2020 that "as part of a strategy to exit markets that don't produce adequate returns on investments" it was exiting from all right hand drive markets worldwide, including Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. This coincided with the demise in 2020 of the Holden brand, hitherto a large distributor of GM Korea products. In April 2022, GM Korea's Bupyeong 2 plant was closed due to reduced productivity. The Spark and Malibu were to be discontinued in the South Korean market by August 2022. The Bolt EV and Bolt EUV were discontinued in the South Korean market on 1 December 2023.