General Motors Company

automobile concern. shareholders – US Treasury (35.5%), United Auto Workers (10.3%), Canada Gen Investments (9%). capitalization – $43.4 billion. financial indicators (2010): revenue – $135.6 billion, net profit – $4.7 billion. Sales (2010) – 8.39 million vehicles (2nd place in the world).

From February 2012, Kaliningrad's Avtotor will begin assembling two new models – the Chevrolet Captiva and the Opel Antara, according to Avtotor's 2010 report published this week.

These crossovers are the first models that General Motors (GM) began to assemble at a temporary site in St. Petersburg even before the plant was launched. The single-platform Captiva and Antara were the first to roll off the assembly line of the St. Petersburg plant in 2008, in which the concern invested $300 million.

But GM was embarking on a large-scale project with a capacity of 60,000 cars per year in order to produce mass-market models. And already at the end of 2009, the Chevrolet Cruze was added to the crossovers, and at the beginning of 2010 – the Opel Astra.

The assembly of Captiva and Antara in St. Petersburg is closing, and at the beginning of next year it will be completely transferred to Kaliningrad, say employees of two GM partners. The concern is clearing the conveyor to increase production of the popular Cruze and Astra, says one of them. According to him, Captiva and Antara do not qualify for industrial assembly benefits, since they are assembled from large units.

Captiva and Antara are still being produced in St. Petersburg, GM representative Sergei Lepnukhov assures, without specifying the company's plans. Avtotor CEO Valery Gorbunov declined to comment.

According to AutoDealer-SPb, the GM plant assembled about 23,000 cars in the first half of the year. The two crossovers account for about 10% of production, the plant's CEO Romuald Rytwinski said in early June. In the first half of 2011, 21,868 Opel Astras were sold in Russia (including imports) - 2.4 times more than in the same period last year, Chevrolet Cruze sales almost doubled to 15,583 cars, according to data from the Association of European Businesses (AEB). Antara and Captiva are not among the top 25 best-selling models in Russia, as determined by the AEB.

Antara and Captiva will disappear from the market for at least six months, dealers know – CEO of Atlant-M Lakhta Evgeny Pekarsky and member of the board of directors of Laura Mikhail Logutenko. According to Pekarsky, after the collective vacation, which will end on August 15, new crossovers will not be delivered to dealers – Avtotor will gradually begin to master their production. These are popular models, but in the conditions of the already emerging shortage of Astra and Cruze, it makes no sense to load the St. Petersburg plant with crossovers, Logutenko believes. The updated modification of Captiva after restyling will be delivered to the Avtotor conveyor, he adds. The queue for individual modifications of Astra and Cruze is already reaching 1-3 months, both dealers say.

In June, GM announced plans to expand production in St. Petersburg. According to Rytwinski, its capacity should reach 98,000 cars by the end of the year, and 230,000 by 2015.

Crossovers have given way