by David Finlay (22 Sep 03)

It seems increasingly likely that GM will gradually phase out the name Daewoo and replace it with that of Chevrolet within the next decade.

The American giant created GM Daewoo out of the wreckage of the bankrupt Korean firm in 2002. European chief Erhard Spranger says that a problem immediately became apparent: "The old Daewoo nameplate and the GM Daewoo name do not differentiate enough, so it is better to use Chevrolet in markets where Daewoo was not active before."

Chevrolet, of course, is a GM-owned name of long standing, and it has already been used for cars formerly sold as Daewoos in the US and the Asia-Pacific region (and indeed for new Lada products sold in Russia). The process will continue later this year when the Chevrolet badge is introduced on Daewoo models in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the Ukraine.

Whether or not the same thing will happen in western Europe is a matter of some doubt. There are those who say it will, but Spranger is not confirming that: "We should not draw any conclusion from what we do in eastern European markets for the time being."

Perhaps not. But Daewoo is not a particularly natural name for western Europeans to deal with. For a start, its correct pronunciation ("day-oo", the "w" being silent in Korean) is not particularly obvious. Most of us can pronounce Chevrolet properly, partly because it's a more familiar word through its popularity in the US and partly because it is a western European (in Louis Chevrolet's case Swiss) surname.

On the other hand, there are one or two possible difficulties, at least as far as UK buyers are concerned. Although Chevrolet represents ordinary family transport to most Americans, to British motorists it conjures up images of big, powerful performance cars - in other words, nothing like anything that has ever been sold with a Daewoo badge.

There is also very little Chevrolet loyalty in evidence in this country. GM has tried in recent years to sell the Corvette and the Camaro through selected Vauxhall dealerships here, but found almost no takers.

The advisability of selling Daewoos as Chevrolets in the UK is therefore open to question. Using the Vauxhall name in some ways makes more sense, though that's unlikely to be politically acceptable within GM.

(Primary source: Automotive News Europe).

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