Opel Plant's Closing Means Next Zafira To Be Built By PSA, Other Future Plans Fall Into Place
Even though Opel will be tasked with developing the next Citroen C5, PSA will be responding in kind by providing some expertise of their own, in the form of small minivans.
PSA, which builds a number of popular small minivans, like the Citroen Picasso, will be tasked with building the next generation Opel Zafira – the vehicle that, along with the Renault Scenic, practically invented the small MPV segment in Europe.
Autocar reports that production of the Opel Astra will be moving to Poland as well as Ellsemere Port, UK, leaving Russelheim, former home of the Astra, with only the Insignia…and perhaps the new Citroen C5 midsize sedan, if our detective work is correct. That would leave PSA’s Rennes plant which is apparently getting a “ 40 million euro investment“, free to produce the new MPV, soothing fears by French unions that the plant would be shuttered.
The main casualty of the affair will be the Bochum plant, which builds the Zafira and Astra. We previously reported on Bochum’s imminent closure, but with the GM-PSA alliance re-jigging European operations to optimize their use of production capacity, it likely just sped up the inevitable.
More by Derek Kreindler
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I shared the commonly held opinion on TTAC when the PSA/GM partnership/alliance was announced of WTH. But this news and other platform sharing makes some sense and does involve cutting capacity. GM still has a good market share in Europe and many companies would love to have 8% (Toyota, Honda, Kia/Hyundai etc), they just need to make sure the market share they have is profitable.
In Australia the Opel is sold as the Holden. The resemblance with Opel designed products to the "pure" Holden designs is uncanny.
I'm guessing it'll be less a case of GM simply rebadging a PSA van than the vans being co-developed. Opel has been a bit more successful with MPVs than Peugeot (the Zafira being something of a staple, while the 806/7 is a bit lackluster, from what I understand), so Opel will probably still take the lead on development, it'll just be built in a Peugeot plant. Linking the Insignia with the C5 is rather puzzling; Peugeot already has an established midsize platform with the 508; I'm not sure what they'd gain by basing it on Epsilon II rather than their own, already developed architecture.
That's not a bad-looking (micro?)van. Would be a great competitor to the Mazda5 here.