Daewoo
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Daewoo
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| Introduction | The Asian economic crisis hit
Korean car makers the most as domestic demand dropped severely in 1998.
However, the no. 2 Korean car maker took the chance and absorbed the bankrupted
SUV maker Ssangyong. Next year, the weakened Korean dollar and wage cut
helped a super strong growth rarely seen. Of course the products are also
very important - within 2 years, Daewoo replaced its whole line-up with
several world-class models - Lanos, Nubira, Leganza and Matiz. The latter
is especially competitive in the worldwide market. 
Daewoo has a lot of R&D centers in Europe, including the 1,000 men-strong Worthing Technical Center in UK which was bought from IAD. This is because its Korean engineers are not yet competent enough to develop cars up to the world standards. From the current line-up, we saw nearly every important aspects were touched by the Western consultants - Italdesign (styling), IDEA (styling), Holden (engine), Tickford (engine), Ricardo (engine), Delphi (engine), GM (transmission), Opel (suspension), Lotus (handling and ride tuning) and Porsche (handling and ride tuning). In other words, Daewoo s cars are developed by the United Nation ! Since the joint venture with Poland s FSO was established, Daewoo is following the Japanese experience to expand its overseas production and pursuing to be a global car maker. It s target is to raise the production to 2.5 million vehicles in 2000. We shall wait to see if it succeed and if that is enough to prevent Daewoo from taking over by someone else. |
| Sales figure | There are several versions about Daewoo `s sales and production figure. Daewoo claimed its worldwide production capacity, including overseas joint-venture, reached 2.37 million cars and commercial vehicle in 1998. However, other reliable sources said Daewoo sold just 750,000 cars and light trucks in 1997. Anyway, Daewoo has been expanding quickly since 1997, therefore today s sales must be well exceeding 1 million cars and trucks per annum. |
| Location | R&D centers : Worthing Technical
Center, UK; GTC, Germany. Domestic plant : Pupyong (Lanos, Leganza), Kunsan (Nubira), Changwon (Matiz), Pyongtaek (Ssangyong). Overseas plant : Poland (joint venture with FSO, produces Matiz) |
| Brief History | The Daewoo story began with General
Motors. In 1972, GM established a joint venture with Korean car maker Shinjin
Motor Co., the company named GM Korea and is obviously GM s weapon to dominate
the South Korean market. Although 50% stakes were sold to local industrial
giant Daewoo Group in 1978, GM still controlled the development of cars.
In fact, Daewoo did not really involve much the new car development because GM could always find some outdated cars from its Opel etc. operation to transfer to Daewoo. The Pontiac Lemans of the late 80 s was one of the examples. In the light of supplying the US market to fight against the Japanese small cars, Daewoo started to produce this rebadged version of Opel Kaddet on behalf of GM. However, the project gave the Korean car maker the first taste of large volume export which became the sales policy today. It also gave Daewoo a modernised plant with 170,000 annual capacity. GM quit in 1992 as it sold the remaining stakes to Daewoo group. As the US influence evacuated, Daewoo started to develop its own cars. That called for setting up R&D centers in Europe and subcontractting many development projects to overseas consultants. With the help from the Western experts, the small car Lanos was born in 1995. Next year, Daewoo invested into Poland s FSO, forming a joint venture which eventually produces the Matiz mini car. In 1998, SUV maker Ssangyong bankrupted and was received by Daewoo. Daewoo group used to have variety of business in different fields. In 1999, the group got into financial crisis due to the over-expansion during the previous few years, thus resulted in selling nearly all business but the car division. |
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