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We went to Seoul and found that GM makes lots of cars there including a marque just for South Korea!

By Shahzad Sheikh

My epic trip to Korea !

Whilst we were visiting South Korea to drive the new Chevrolet Trax, we were treated to a an audience with the president and CEO, Sergio Rocha, of GM Korea, toured the biggest and oldest factory at the Incheon HQ, got shown their brand new proving ground and even got another chance to drive some of the cars built there, including the Chevrolet Malibu and Cruze. So what did we learn?

1. GM Korea was originally GM Daewoo after General Motors bought the automotive part of Daewoo Group in 2001. The name was officially changed to GM Korea in March 2011 and Chevrolet and Cadillac were launched as ‘home’ brands in Korea.

2. It’s the third biggest car company in the country with four manufacturing plants in Korea as well as a facility in Vietnam, employing 17,000 people.

3. It’s GM’s largest operation outside of the United States.

4. They can build up to more than two million units, either as complete cars or in kit form for assembly in other markets. In fact they produce not only Chevrolets models but also models for the Holden, Opel/Vauxhall and Buick brand as well as a home-grown premium brand.

5. The Alpheon is a premium brand just for Korea only. It’s just one car, an executive saloon, which is essentially a rebadged Buick LaCrosse.

6. Out of nearly 800,000 units produced last year, over 630,000 were exported over 150 countries. If you consider the CKD export – Complete Knock-downs, the total production volume last year was nearly 2 million. Nearly 1.8 mil was for export.

7. They sold over 150,000 cars in Korea in 2013.

8. They have a Design and Engineering Centre at the HQ in Incheon employing 200 people.

9. Built a brand new proving ground nearby in 2007. Cheongna proving Ground includes long straights, banked bowls, a handling course, a huge dynamic area, multiple surface tests and simulated gradients – it’s very mountainous in Korea you know!

10. The factory we visited is the oldest in the company and even today has a capacity of 440,000 units per year.

11. In fact Daewoo was first established as National Motor in 1937 at the same plant, Bupyeong-gu, Incheon. The name was changed to Saenara Motor in 1962 and they were building a version of the Datsun Bluebird PL310. This was in fact the very first automobile company in Korea.

12. The names changes continued! It later became Shinjin Motor and then Saehan Motor after the first joint venture with General Motors as back as 1972. It became Daewoo in 1982, and all the cars were based on GM models. During our tour we saw a variety of models being made including Chevrolets, Opels and Buicks.