Paris Car Show

Going global: GM debuts Chevrolet Cruze

Model designed to please buyers on both sides of the Atlantic

Christine Tierney / The Detroit News

PARIS — In the splendor of the Pavillon Dauphine bordering the famous Bois de Boulogne, General Motors Corp. celebrated the debut of the stylish Chevrolet Cruze compact Wednesday in a vast hall lighted by chandeliers.

Crowds of reporters and photographers surrounded the car, examining the fit and finish of the door handles, the mirrors and interior controls. But the model’s most significant features are the ones the crowds didn’t see: the set of core components — or architecture — that provide the underpinnings for the Cruze and eventually for all of GM’s compact cars in all regions of the worlds.

The Cruze is the first model built on the compact-car architecture designed and engineered by GM’s European operations. Based in Rüsselsheim, Germany, GM Europe also is developing the architecture for all of the automaker’s mid-size cars.

Like its rival Ford Motor Co., GM is now drawing more on the expertise of its European designers and engineers to add more stylish and fuel-efficient cars to its model ranges around the world.

GM will start selling the Cruze in the United States in 2010, the same year that Ford will launch its European-designed Fiesta subcompact in the U.S. Ford also has entrusted its European operations with the development of the next platform for the Focus and other compact cars. Both automakers are betting that the recent rise in demand for cars in the U.S. is a long-term trend, and that American consumers will pay a little more for well-appointed small and compact cars.

Traditionally, most of the small cars available in the United States have been bargain-priced models aimed at entry-level customers. By contrast, European consumers enjoy a wide choice of small and compact car offerings, ranging from BMW’s upscale 1 and 3 Series cars to the stalwart VW Golf and affordable Chevrolet Aveo, as well as compact-size crossovers.

With the rise in gas prices, American consumers now are showing interest in the cars that Ford and GM have been selling only in Europe.

Tapping the experts

But even before the recent shifts in customer tastes, GM was streamlining its global engineering process by assigning various regions worldwide responsibility for different segments. GM North America was a natural to develop the architecture for full-size pickups, and its South Korean operations had great expertise in developing minicars affordably.

"When we talk about compact cars, Europe jumps out immediately for a number of reasons," Jon Lauckner, vice president of global program management, said in an interview.

One in every four cars sold in Europe is a compact and it has the widest range of models in that category. The cars also are designed to perform well on a wide variety of road conditions. "You can typically take a car that has been designed and does very well in Europe and bring it to another region and manufacture it, and it will be successful," he said. "But the reverse is not true."

In addition to the Cruze, GM’s compact-car architecture serves as the foundation for the Chevrolet Orlando compact van concept that also was shown here. The architecture also will be used in the next Opel Astra, in future Chevrolet and Buick compacts, and some of the components will appear in the Chevrolet Volt electric car.

Eventually the number of cars built on the architecture annually "would easily be 1.5 million — probably more," Lauckner said.

Though GM’s European operations are relatively high-cost by comparison with other regions, GM expects to save a lot of money by sharing one single set of core components across such a large number of cars.

"When you net it all out," Lauckner said, "you’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars — no doubt."

Ford also expects to save money by having its European operations take more responsibility for its car development. Ford of Europe, based in Cologne, will design the small and mid-size cars that Ford will sell around the world.

Within five years, the Dearborn automaker expects to build about 1 million cars on the new European-designed Fiesta platform and 2 million on the new compact platform. It now has two compact car platforms. By reducing that to one, Ford officials expect to increase the slender profitability of their compact car business.

Auto consultant Jim Hall, managing director of 2953 Analytics LLP in Birmingham, said Ford’s approach is to take cars designed in Europe and offer them in other markets after making minor adaptations, "whereas GM is going to do more tailoring of the cars for the markets where they sell them. That’s the way Toyota does it."

Keeping it flexible

Like Ford, GM is seeking to generate economies of scale and save money and time.

But its executives wanted to allow enough flexibility in the process to allow different brands and regions to build cars off the architecture that would meet the needs and demands of their customers.

"The trick is, to design an architecture that can, in a cost-effective say, serve the needs of developed markets and at the same time meet the requirements of emerging markets," Lauckner said. "Otherwise, you get a world car and that is not — definitely not — what we want to do."

GM’s common architecture consists of a set of core components, such as the front floor, the motor compartment, the heating and air conditioning systems, and the rear underbody, that allows brands to interchange a part or two to alter characteristics, such as drive and handling. Engineers can produce a variety of body types using the same architecture.

While Chevrolet hasn’t announced whether it will produce a model based on the Orlando, GM executives noted that demand for small crossovers is growing in Europe — and they already have many of the parts.