Slumping sales broke Opel chief's neck (General Motors Europe)
General Motors has grown increasingly impatient with reforms at its European division, comprising carmakers Opel and Vauxhall. The resignation of Opel's chief came on the back of a sales disaster this year.
German automaker Opel's sales dipped by about 8 percent in the first half of 2012, the mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Friday. New registrations of Opel vehicles in Germany went down by 9.3 percent over the same period.
Analysts said there could be no doubt that the carmaker's sales problems were the number-one reason for the surprise resignation of Opel chief Karl-Friedrich Stracke on Thursday. Michael Robinet of the IHS Consulting Firm near Detroit in the US said Opel's parent company, General Motors, had grown more impatient with the slow pace of change in its European division.
"Change of leadership denotes a new direction is required, maybe a new speed at which some of the necessary changes occur," Robinet told the Associated Press. "It also signals to labor that there's a new sheriff in town."
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