Daewoo Owners Group

GM Daewoo Auto & Technology (GM Daewoo or GMDAT) was first established as National Motor in 1937 in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, South Korea. After changing its name to Saenara Motor in 1962, Saenara Motor was bought by Shinjin Industrial in 1965, which changed its name to Shinjin Motor after establishing collaborations with Toyota.

After Toyota's withdrawal in 1972, Shinjin Motor started a joint venture with General Motors under the name General Motors Korea, but was renamed again in 1976 to Saehan Motor. After the Daewoo Group gained control in 1982 the name was changed to Daewoo Motor. In the early 1990s the company started to expand heavily throughout the world. Until 1996 all cars were based on models from General Motors. After the Asian financial crisis started in 1997, it took over the troubled 4WD specialist SsangYong in 1998, but ran into financial trouble in 1999.

In 2001 General Motors decided to buy most of Daewoo Motor's assets to form GM Daewoo. The new company started operations on October 17, 2002, with GM and its partners Suzuki and SAIC holding a stake of 66.7% with investments of US$400 million. The GM holding was formally purchased by GM Holden Ltd which holds a seat on the board [1]. The remaining equity stake of 33.3% was held by Korea Development Bank and several other Korean creditors with investments of US$197 million. The deal did not include 15 plants, especially Daewoo's oldest plant in Bupyeong-gu which now operates under the name Daewoo Incheon Motor Company as a supplier to GM Daewoo; General Motors plans to buy this plant by 2008. In 2004, Tata Motors purchased Daewoo's Truck manufacturing unit. In February 2005, GM invested US$49 million to raise its share in the company to 48.2%. Furthermore, GM acquired 6.9 million shares in GM Daewoo for US$21 million from Suzuki Motors in August of the same year. General Motors' share in GM Daewoo then increased to 50.9%. Suzuki still holds 11% of GMDAT but is reported to be considering selling this to GM.

GMDAT has design, engineering, research & development facilities that are involved in development for various GM products. On November 25, 2003, the design center was relocated to the new 2-story building at the Bupyeong-gu headquarters and assigned the task to style a new SUV based on GM's Theta automobile platform to be released in 2006.

GMDAT has manufacturing plants in Korea and an assembly plant in Vietnam. GMDAT-designed cars are also assembled in mainland China, Thailand, India, and Colombia (as of February 2005). Its cars are marketed in over 140 countries (as of February 2005). In 2004, GMDAT sold more than 900,000 vehicles worldwide.
Daewoos were first sold around the world as the Daewoo LeMans or Pontiac LeMans or known as Daewoo Racer, a model based on the Opel Kadett E. The Saehan Bird, based on the General Motors T-car platform, was exported to Malaysia as the Opel Gemini; this was also known in South Korea as the Daewoo Maepsy. A larger Opel Commodore-based model, called the Daewoo Royale was also available. The Daewoo Prince, which had commonalities with the Australian Holden Commodore, was built until 1993.

In the 1990s, Daewoo expanded its presence under its own brand, notably in Europe, where it sold the Opel Ascona-based Espero and Kadett-based Daewoo Nexia (also Racer and Cielo in the domestic market; the latter is often spelled as Ciero for more Korean-like sound. The Cielo was named Heaven (Cielo means heaven in Spanish) in the Chilean market.

Ssangyong models Korando and Musso were sold briefly under the Daewoo brand in certain European countries (most notably France and Germany) from 1999 to 2001.


The Daewoo EsperoUnder the supervision of Dr. Ulrich Bez, Daewoo developed its own models not based on any GM platform. These were codenamed as the T100, J100 and V100, reflecting the code names used by General Motors, with Italdesign Giugiaro working on the T100 and V100. The J100 was designed by IDEA of Italy. These were exported from late 1998 to Daewoo Motor America as the sub-compact Daewoo Lanos (meaning "pleasure" in Latin), compact Daewoo Nubira ("to go everywhere/anywhere" in Korean), and the mid-size Daewoo Leganza (combining the words elegante and forza, the latter meaning power in Italian). Other markets received these three cars, too. The Leganza's styling was reportedly based on an Italdesign show car based on Jaguar XJ-12 mechanicals; the real thing was more modest, with Holden-built 2.2 L engines shipped from Melbourne to Daewoo's Korean plant.

The Rezzo/Tacuma minivan and the Matiz/Spark micro-car are other models sold by Daewoo in various markets. The Magnus/Evanda is a development of the Leganza. The Daewoo Kalos subcompact was released in late 2002. A new version of the Nubira sedan was released in 2003 while the Daewoo Lacetti, a 5-door hatchback version of the Nubira, followed in 2004. The Kalos and the Lacetti were styled by Giugiaro, and styling of the Nubira sedan was the responsibility of Pininfarina. These models are sold under the Chevrolet brand in Europe