- MOSCOW (Reuters) - General
Motors Corp said on Wednesday it would start to assemble its Hummer H2
sports utility vehicle in Russia to target the country's growing band of
businessmen with money to burn and a desire to impress.
-
- GM signed a framework agreement with Russian automaker
Avtotor at Moscow's annual motor show to produce two to four hundred of
the huge cars, which are based on the military Humvee, and hopes to begin
selling them in November.
-
- The vehicles will be made at Avtotor's plant in Kaliningrad,
a Russian enclave in the Baltic region.
-
- The Hummer H2 weighs almost 3,000 kilograms, has a six-liter
engine and fuel consumption of just 20 liters per 100 kilometers. It falls
outside U.S. regulations on fuel economy and has drawn the ire of environmental
activists.
-
- "We expect our customers to be achievers who want
to show off their success and follow the fashion set by Hollywood actors,
or successful people who hunt and need to travel across difficult terrain,"
GM's regional marketing manager Pawel Widel told Reuters.
-
- "It will be a very unique car in Russia and Arnold
Schwarzenegger is its icon, so it's a very strong and masculine image,"
he added. Tough-guy actor Schwarzenegger drove a Hummer H1, the predecessor
of the current model.
-
- Widel said that the car sells for between $50,000 and
$60,000 in the United States but Avtotor Chairman Vladimir Shcherbakov
said the Hummer H2 would sell for $85,000 to $110,000 in Russia.
-
- "It's a niche product, so realistically 400 is the
maximum we can hope to sell in a year. We don't have plans to produce thousands
of them," he said, adding that the market for all luxury SUVs in Russia
was only around 10,000 per year.
-
- Avtotor already assembles KIAs and BMWs at the Kaliningrad
plant. All parts for the new model will be imported from the United States.
-
- Shcherbakov said the company would invest another $70
million in the plant on top of $200 million already plowed in.
-
- GM would not give any figures, saying the agreement was
at a framework stage and that many details still needed to be ironed out.
-
- GM already makes cheap off-road Chevrolet Nivas at a
$322 million joint venture with AvtoVAZ in the Volga town of Togliatti,
and AvtoVAZ has said the plant will soon start production of Opel Astras
there too.
-
- Widel said the Hummer H2, available in bright yellow
and orange as well as the original black, met all Russian environmental
rules.
-
- "It won't be long before you see them on the streets
of Moscow and St Petersburg," he said.
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
|