GM Daewoo CEO Sees Progress and Growth

In a recent Korea Herald interview GM Korea Head Nick Reilly describes the his tenure in Korea.

The past four years were a highly transitional period for the Korean auto industry. Strong exports drove domestic carmakers up from the aftermath of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis under new ownership.

GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. chief executive Nick Reilly, who has led the recovery of the nation's No.3 automaker since late 2001, recalls four years ago as complete turmoil.

After the acquisition in 2002, GM Daewoo has gone through three phases. The first was to calm it down from the turmoil. Employee moral was very low and sales were going down. So we had to steady the ship a little bit, Reilly notes

The second phase for GM Daewoo was to get their first real growth. GM Daewoo has been successful in this as well as their exports grew from 127,000 units in 2002 to 800,000 units last year. The company expects its export volume to reach a million cars this year.

We have just entered the third phase as the first new products are coming from the new company, Reilly said. GM Daewoo recently launched the Gentra, a successor to its Kalos sedan, this month. Its first diesel-powered sport-utility vehicle is to be produced at its new Bupyeong plant which it plans to acquire next month.

We are to develop here what we call the basic architecture for small cars. Other parts of GM take that architecture and skin it, put their styling for whatever car it is, Reilly said.

Since each brand has different requirements and engines, GM needs to create an architecture that can cope with all of those.

The British-born CEO is also a vice president of General Motors Corp. and a member of GM's senior leadership board.

Although 90 percent of his job is to manage GM Daewoo, Reilly also heads GM's marketing and sales for the Asia Pacific region.

Reilly sums up the success of GM Daewoo in the past few years as a combination of good work done here with the opportunities it has as a part of the global group - 70 percent of its exports go through GM's distribution channels.

I see it interesting that the CEO added that he believes the Korean auto industry is also moving in a direction to see less labor-management conflict in the future like Japan, Europe and the United States. I think this comment might be a little premature...given the Korean labor situation.