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-   -   Chevrolet to stop selling cars in India? EDIT: Confirmed on page 8 (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/185429-chevrolet-stop-selling-cars-india-edit-confirmed-page-8-a-14.html)

Seeing that a lot of Chevrolet owners are concerned, I just spoke to my reliable parts shop - Shetty Motors @ Opera House. He said that in the short to mid-term, owners have absolutely nothing to worry about. There is enough demand from owners of popular cars (Cruze, Beat, Tavera) for vendors to keep supporting them with part supplies. The business is there. In the long term though (say, 5 years down the road), he says there will be issues as most people will have moved on from Chevrolet cars.

If I owned a Chevrolet today & was happy with it, I'd retain the car. No point selling it at a bargain basement price. Use for a couple of years, save up the money you'd otherwise have spent and then buy a nice car.

EDIT: Just saw Ashutoshb posting on similar lines as I was submitting this message.

Expected outcome of this is that there are already multiple Chevy cars on sale in TBHP as well as OLX! If people are willing to take a bet on the spares being available than they can get a sweet deal. :)

A history of GM's brand strategy

1994
Manufacturer of premium euro cars which were decent if not exciting to drive.

Lost Opportunity - Potential to let Opel gain some additional production volume and feed into the the SE Asian market and Middle East.

Opel badge had no negative brand image!

Scratch that

2003

Manufacture the same now obsolete platform with designs from Korea. Tries to hide Korean origins by slapping the Chevrolet badge. Play the worthy but good value card

The value part worked well

Scratch that!

2010

Manufacture the same even more obsolete platform with designs from China. What works in most of Asia will work in Asia - all asians are the same!

Scratched

The writing was clearly on the wall when I saw the salesmen from the showroom spending more time in the local teashop than in the showroom

You got it wrong - this is the GM strategy - "why try building cars that cannot jump over the Mexican wall when you can build cars which are built to drive across water"

Any takers for Talegaon - May be Fiat , if they get their act to together but that would take a long time. May be Skoda will relocate from Aurangabad!

Well, Am not that surprised with GM exit announcement, as i feel that's 'best' effort the management could do in the last 4-5 years.

If you just look at GM's dwindling career graph in India post 2011 and the products they launched since then 'for India', you can visualize the effort from management. It's not that they saw a dip in last year or two. It's been consistent and alarming dip over last 6 years, for a "global leader" to watch and give Paracetamol tablets (enjoy, Sail/U-VA and let age/die beat, cruze, Tavera) for something that may turn fatal.

On that note, wanted to acknowledge Mr. Karl Slym, who made the name popular in the indian household between '07-'11. During whose tenure the Chevrolet brand grew strong and sold cars pretty well (may be better than some of current Top 5). He (personally) introduced 'Chevrolet Promise' plan and stood by it. During his tenure they expanded the operations (MH Plant). Launches that did bring good success Optra 'TDCi', Cruze, Beat and Spark as well (IIRC).

Personally, during his tenure I also bought a Spark (7.5 years strong & still used by my dad without any concern). There was a delay in delivery from the dealer and unprofessional attitude from their end (some error from the dealer and he wanted me either to buy a just launch beat or higher version of Spark (LT)). Frustrated with delay, at one point wrote a mail directly to Karl Slym quoting "Chevrolet Promise" and in a span of few hours i receive a call from the dealer mentioning the car will be delivered the next day and apologizing for the delay. Post that i received couple calls, one from Customer Service and another from Corporate/Central office.

Thank you Karl Slym!

RIP Chevrolet!

I just checked on their portal and they are not providing Genuine OEM parts. They are providing substitute parts, which in my experience till now are not as good as OEM. I checked for Beat Diesel.

That's surprising! Like I said earlier, I have always got OEM parts from them. Generally, their product pages have options for a customer to choose from. From OEM to aftermarket.

That's why I wrote, how wonderful it would be, if GM had such a portal of its own.

Have you checked the price and MRP sticker on the parts supplied to you? As per my experience till now if an OEM part is available, the MRP sticker is removed and price quoted is higher than actual.

I checked for Beat diesel and I didn't see OEM parts for regular items like oil filter, air filter and break pads. They are charging 200 Rs for shipping as well. Substitute parts are easily available in the local market, then why pay shipping cost and wait for parts?



P.S. I am just saying this as a Chevrolet customer. Thanks for the link though might be of help to some. :)

Determined owners will not suffer because of spare part availability - bear in mind that the India operations have shut down, but global operations still exist. Suppliers will be able to source parts from other markets and put them up on websites like Amazon.

Believe me, the average age of my daily drivers is 30 years old. If I can source parts for cars made in the 80s, you have nothing to worry about :)

So Chevrolet is done in India? not surprised...

A Chevrolet product - the Optra is among the 3 Bad car's I've owned.

The other two being a 1.2 Fiat Palio and a diesel Honda Amaze.

The Optra 1.6 that i had was a truly bad product with numerous faults mechanical, electrical problems with the brakes, the air conditioning cropping up all the time despite my regular servicing, check ups and quite light usage.

The After Sales service from their dealer in Chandigarh too was unprofessional and quite abysmal - i finally got fed up and sold the Optra 3 yrs later at about 28K mileage driven for quite a low sum as i just didn't wanna drive or even look at the clunker anymore.

Now I stick to the Japanese (except shitty Japanese products made only for India such as Etios, Amaze etc) and German engineered vehicles.

This is bad news for those owing Chevys and planning to sell them and go in for a new car.

The resale values will be in free-fall pretty soon and I only shudder to think about what a lovingly owned and maintained Cruze will now fetch in the market.

Am not sure a lot of owners will be comfortable sending the car to a local workshop and sourcing parts from outside the showroom?

If you dont know the workshop guy you can get ripped off pretty badly.

I remember the story of a person who gave a Daewoo Cielo to a garage for repair, a few years back and the garage owner told him he would get parts shipped from the Daewoo factory in Korea !!

Here is a link that may to some extent answer your query:

http://www.zeebiz.com/companies/news...s-to-you-16364

The way their sales were going, this was bound to happen. I would always request all new car buyers to, as a thumbrule, see and study the last one year sales figures of any car brand and model they wish to zero upon.

As a thumbrule, car makers are here to make money. If they don't make money, they break their link with the country. Its GM now exiting India and South Africa by the end of 2017. Last year it was Ford, which announced in January 2016, that it plans to exit Indonesia and Japan for the same (sluggish sales) reason by the middle of 2016. And they did !

Most private GM car owners (incl. the Tavera taxi operators) are likely to suffer from want of spares in the near future. The above stated committment by GM if honoured is OK , but Mr Kaher Kazim the GM India, MD has not given a roadmap, nor has he revealed the number of years for which such spares and services/ service agreements (incl. AMC done by some buyers) will be available. And knowing our market well, the dealers will immediately quit GM and try for newer brand dealerships with immediate effect. We all know what happened to the Peugeot 309, Daewoo range and Opel brands, though Opel had the GM back-up, after their switch-over to the Chevrolets.

Indeed, these were Chevrolets with their initial Korean and with later addition of Chinese genes. The badging did more harm than good to the reputed brand Chevrolet !

They cannot - forbidden by law, they have to sell cars to sell engines. Else they loose their classification for doing business in India as Automotive producer and qualify in vendor category.

R.I.P Chevy, once a manufacturer known for powerful and reliable American cars, reduced to a mere flop show. :Frustrati

If you are someone who used to monitor the indian market closely around 2009, you would be surprised to hear this. The Cruze, the Beat and even the Captiva managed to captivate the Indian market to a certain extent. What did GM have to do then?

Simple. Maintain momentum and launch new products in leading segments to consolidate a position in the market. But alas, the next decade was a torture for GM and Indian customers alike. Cheap chinese products such as the sail and the enjoy made sure that Indians steered away from this brand.

An expected and well deserved death if you consider their current lineup. I used to love the Cruze, but the only reason why my dad decided against it and went for a Jetta was GM. He had already been betrayed by Opel once and had suffered due to lack of spares. One thing he didn't want to do was beg for spares if GM shut shop in India. I must say, I purely used my heart and asked him to go for the Cruze but he used his brains like a wise old man would and avoided it. :)

Sad to see a brand with great potential give up without a try . On a lighter note, the sales team should at least go through team-bhp and other forums to see how an Indian customer thinks and acts. It is better than spending millions on marketing research and launching models that customers don't buy.

Spoke to TVS Sundaram service personnel regarding the impact of GM's announcement and this is what they had to say.
1. GM has insisted that present authorised dealers provide service for at least 5 years and has entered into "supposed" agreement with dealers.
2. Regular recurring spares have been stacked up and hence body shop works need not be a reason to worry.
3. As GM is not stopping it's export market, it has not disappeared from India, and hence lack of support to existing owners will impact their manufacturing facility.
4. Dealer is at least verbally commiting to honor warranty claims as of now.
Reassuring as all of this sounds, I gave away my Duster and got an all new Cruze 2016 which was a market dud. Hence , I still have butterflies in my stomach. The car however brings a smile on my face, everytime I floor it and I'm left wondering how GM could get the right product and still fail. :Frustrati
C'est la vie.