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Weekly UpdatesGerman car manufacturer Adam Opel AG, a unit of General Motors, warned of possible job cuts in Europe as it abandoned its goal to increase its German market share in a shrinking overall market for cars.
Chief executive Carl-Peter Forster told reporters that Opel, Germany's second-biggest carmaker now aimed merely to maintain its German market share in 2001. Forster said he still expected Opel to report a stronger result in 2001 than in 2000 but refused to be pinned down on when the loss-making carmaker would return to profit and said no comeback would be possible if GM did not shed European staff.
"(Recovery) is probably not possible without job cuts in Europe but it is still unclear where they would come and how many there would be," Forster said in one of his first pronouncements as the new head of GM's German unit.
Opel, maker of the Astra compact mid-size car and the Zafira compact minivan, lost 982 million marks ($427.7 million) in 2000, the worst year in its 100-year history. The mass- market manufacturer has been squeezed between luxury and budget vehicle brands and hurt by its image as a builder of boring vehicles suitable only for basic transportation.
In a sign that the U.S.-led economic slowdown was starting to hit Europe's core manufacturing sector, Forster lowered his forecast for total automobile sales of all manufacturers for the German market for 2001. Opel now expects the German market to have total car sales of between 3.2 and 3.3 million cars in 2001, down from its earlier forecast of 3.5 million.
Forster said he expected the VDA German automobile industry federation, closely watched by auto-sector experts and economists alike, to cut its forecast for German car sales in 2001. Former BMW AG executive Forster took the helm at Opel in March after GM's own man for the job, American Robert Hendry, failed to turn the loss-making giant around. He was the fourth Opel head in three years and the first ever from outside the firm.
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