GM’s Cadillac targets 500,000 annual global vehicle sales by 2020

17 August 2015 07:16 pm Views - 1456

REUTERS: General Motors Co. luxury brand Cadillac aims to increase its annual sales to half a million vehicles worldwide by 2020 from an expected 275,000 this year, Cadillac’s top executive said.

That would boost Cadillac’s share of the global luxury vehicle market to 5 percent from 3.4 percent in 2015, said Johan de Nysschen, head of the Cadillac brand for GM.

In a presentation to investors at a J.P. Morgan industry conference in New York, de Nysschen said the brand needs to improve the quality of its dealer network in the U.S. market, where it once was the luxury sales leader.

“That’s probably the area where we have the most work to do in the United States,” said de Nysschen. “Conversely, in China, where we have a high-quality dealer network, that is not a challenge at all.”

The growth in sales, de Nysschen said, will depend on the successful rollout of a series of new products, including a small luxury SUV, a high-growth market area where Cadillac currently lacks a product.

Among luxury automakers in the U.S. market, Cadillac is sixth, and is the only among the top eight luxury brands to show a drop in sales this year. Cadillac sales were 95,053 vehicles, through July, down 2.4 percent from the same period a year earlier and less than half the sales of the luxury leaders, BMW AG and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz.

On its way to a half million vehicle sales a year globally, Cadillac targets sales of 350,000 in 2018 and 400,000 in 2019.