GM China Launches Two Buick Regals

SHANGHAI, Jan 22, 2003: Reuters reported that U.S. General Motors Corp's Chinese joint venture said it has introduced two 2.5-litre Buick Regal cars in the booming and increasingly competitive domestic market.

The announcement came almost a month after GM revamped its Buick models and launched the top-of-the-line Regal with a 2.98-litre engine and electronically controlled four-speed automatic transmission.

The newly announced Buick Regal G2.5 and GL2.5 models, made by GM's 50-percent-owned Shanghai GM, will cost 243,800 yuan and 263,800 yuan respectively, GM said in a statement late on Tuesday.

The models, which will complete with Honda Motor Co's popular Accords and Mazda Motor Corp's Mazda6, will be available in the world's fastest growing market after the Lunar New Year in February, it said.

The statement gave no sales forecast figure and GM executives in China were not immediately available for comment.

Shanghai GM has said it sold 35,420 Buick mid-size sedans in China in the first 11 months of last year, up a whopping 96 percent.

Analysts estimated the sales would have hit roughly 40,000 for all of 2002 and GM executives had said this year's sales should rise 20 percent year on year.

GM said last year the Regal would also be fitted with two-litre engines in February to compete with rivals in China, where the market is expanding briskly, helped by solid economic growth and an expanding number of joint ventures by the world's largest car makers.

Car producers in China, including foreign joint ventures, sold 1.126 million passenger cars, up 56 percent, in 2002, according to official figures.