GM shifts from bigger is better to less global, more profitable

DETROIT -- General Motors' decision to sell its European operations doubles down on a bet that the company can win by being less global, but more profitable, in an auto industry increasingly driven by software.Without the German Opel and British Vauxhall brands, GM last year would have sold about 8.8 million vehicles -- well behind Germany's Volkswagen AG and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. in the race to be the world's largest automaker by vehicle sales.Opel and Vauxhall combined sold nearly 1.2 million vehicles in 2016, and generated $18.7 billion in revenue, about 11 percent of GM's total.Click here for GM's official press release on the Opel saleHowever, all of GM's activity in Europe -- the investments in new model designs and cleaner engines, the efforts to make factories more efficient and the wages paid to 38,000 employees -- has generated nothing but losses since 1999.Meanwhile, GM's business in North America has boomed. GM's home market operations were reborn as a smaller company due in part to the U.S. government led bankruptcy in 2009, with fewer brands, fewer dealers, fewer employees and far less money owed to creditors and retirees.Since 2009, cheap gasoline has powered a boom in sales of high-profit pickup trucks and SUVs, lifting GM's North American pre-tax profit margins to just over 10 percent in 2016. To keep its North American profit machine revved up, GM will have to invest in new SUVs and trucks, as well as expensive technology to enable those trucks to meet rising federal fuel economy targets.

GM shifts from bigger is better to less global, more profitable

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