Why won't local Chevy bring in real Chevy cars?

[tidus1203]

Why won't the local Chevrolet (General Motors) bring in the Cobalt (compact sedan) to compete with the Civic and Corolla, as well as, bring in the Malibu (mid size sedan) to compete with the Accord and Camry instead of those Korean cars rebadged like the Optra.

[pitbullz]

may malibu pa pala...

[Hanren]

Maybe the market dominated by Toyota and Honda is already saturated kaya mukhang hindi viable na mag risk sila dito..just my 2c ..

[niky]

Cost.

The Chevy Optra is a Korean product, and the cost of importation (as well as the cost of the vehicle itself) is much less. If they bring in the Chevy Cobalt, that's a product that is only produced in the US. Pricing will not be competitive if it is brought here.

Pricing is where the Cobalt competes against the Civic in the US... bring it here, and it'd likely be a little more expensive than a Civic for the same specs. Given that, who would buy it? The Dodge Caliber we are getting is in the same league as the Honda Civic 2.0 and the Mazda3 2.0R in the US, but it costs 1.5 million here. Some of that is mark-up, but some of it is cost of importation. At best, I'd say the Cobalt would cost about 200,000 pesos more than a comparable Civic if brought in. It'd be suicide to sell it instead of the Optra.

The Focus survives on pricing because it is Philippine assembled, which gives Ford a big tax break. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to price it competitively.

The Malibu is supposedly a good car, and apparently able to compete squarely with the Accord and Camry... but pricing, again, is an issue... even more so, as the taxes for vehicles this big are exponentially larger.

[tidus1203]

Di ba nila magagawa yung cars dito to get tax breaks too?

[boybi]

Di ba nila magagawa yung cars dito to get tax breaks too?

It would cost GM billions of pesos to build an assembly plant, and the Philippine market alone is not big enough to justify building an assembly plant here. Also, hindi rin sure kung kakagatin ng Philippine market ang Cobalt and Malibu. Toyota country todits.

[niky]

It depends on what GM's plans are.

Building a local factory is no joke... Ford has one of the biggest because they've committed to making the Philippines the local hub for producing some of their products, like the Lynx and the Focus. Toyota has one because it's rich... ...and they're utilizing its capacity to the fullest because they sell a damn lot of cars. If they sell the new Vios in the numbers they hope to, it'll be good for local labor.

But it's hard. Other manufacturers have had to scale down capacity due to lack of market share... for GM, building a billion-peso local plant to sell a measly.. say... 500 Cobalts a year just won't work.

Patience nalang siguro... GM has just started expanding into the local market, and they'e just poured a ton of money into Daewoo to buy their production facilities in Korea, so any plans they have of building in the Philippines are still at least ten or twenty years away.

Maybe in five years or so, they'll be able to globalize their cars, and we will finally be able to get a decent compact or midsize from them here... till then..

[Memphis Raines]

Di ba nila magagawa yung cars dito to get tax breaks too?

Chevy answered this before by stating that to build their top-end variants here would be impractical since the target market for these models would be very limited and may not offset the cost of building a whole new plant division.

Tax breaks alone wouldn't even make a dent to curb the cost.

However, they are willing to accommodate such orders if the client is willing to shoulder the customs taxes and duties which is the real bummer of the equation here.

[Memphis Raines]

Sabay-sabay pa kaming sumagot nina Boybi at Niky

I guess we are all just as equally eager to have these exciting variants on our shores

[niky]

Eager? Naaah... I've heard the Malibu was good, but I'm not holding my breath... the new Camaro would be nice, though...