GM to spend $250m on car design in China
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-23 13:39

General Motors Corp., the world's top car maker, plans to spend $250 million with a local partner to expand a pivotal car design center in China, and move its Asia-Pacific headquarters to Shanghai by January.

GM, a distant second to Volkswagen AG in the world's fastest-growing major car arena, said the expenditure was part of a planned $3 billion investment over three years in a country it expects to become its No. 2 market in 2004.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner answers a question during a news conference in Shanghai, June 23, 2004. [Reuters]

It intends to raise its annual output to 1.3 million units by 2007 by expanding factories and building new plants, as it tries to catch up with Volkswagen.

GM's sales from its Chinese ventures rose 69.7 percent in May from a year earlier to 41,965 vehicles, the company said in an e-mail to Reuters on Wednesday. January-to-May sales rose 58.6 percent to 219,888 vehicles.

GM and other multinationals are spending a combined $13 billion to ramp up capacity to six million cars annually by the end of the decade -- defying concerns of a glut in two to three years.

The U.S. firm commands about a tenth of the country's car sales, versus Volkswagen's roughly 30 percent.

"We wouldn't mind being number one," GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner told a news conference on Wednesday.

"The primary goal we have is growing ourselves, and the rest of the things tend to take care of themselves," Wagoner said, before leaving to meet officials in Beijing.

Its planned 2.1 billion yuan ($253.7 million) investment in the design center with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp would be funded from income generated in China. The partners would build a top-notch test track and other facilities in two years' time.

NORTH ASIAN FOCUS

GM is also moving decision-makers currently based in Singapore to Shanghai, closer to the north Asian markets -- Japan, South Korea and China -- that yield 85 percent of its sales in the region.

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