With customer demand on the increase in South America, General Motors is setting up a new regional organisation in the area.
Known as GM South America, its headquarters will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and it will be led by Jaime Ardila, who is currently the president and general manager of GM Mercosur. The newly formed organisation is expected to take in the existing sales and manufacturing operations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela as well as sales activities in Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
In addition, GM South America will have both product design and engineering capabilities allowing it to create local cars and trucks to complement the global product architectures.
The organisation will aim to capitalise on GM’s growth in the region – in the first five months of the year alone it sold 394,000 vehicles on the continent with a market share of 20.2 per cent. According to GM chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre it is crucial to focus on countries that are critical to the company’s growth.
