GM CEO: Chinese-Made Buick Will Win American Buyers

General Motors chief executive Mary Barra says the automaker’s first model imported from China for U.S. customers was a savvy business choice, and shouldn’t reflect on its bailout by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Barra’s defense of the Buick Envision, a midsize SUV that GM will import next year, comes after the automaker faced fierce criticism for choosing not to assemble it in North America. Earlier this month, the United Auto Workers union called the move “a slap in the face” to those who supported the Obama administration’s $50 billion rescue.

Barra said the company would be “forever grateful” for its rescue, adding that it had since spent $12 billion on its U.S. factories—but that doing the same for the Envision would have been the wrong decision.

“When you look at the significant number of Buicks that we sell in China, to what we sell in the U.S., this to me is about providing customers with an opportunity,” Barra said in an exclusive interview with Yahoo Autos. “The business case wouldn’t be there to tool up the vehicle in North America.”

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In China, Buick will soon set a new annual sales record, surpassing its 2014 total of 919,582. If it sold that many cars and trucks in the United States, Buick would outpace Jeep, but with 202,347 vehicles sold through November, sales are actually down 3 percent year over year even as the rest of the market has grown.

The Envision, a midsize five-passenger SUV, will compete for buyers who might otherwise choose the Acura RDX or Audi Q5. Both of those models sell for about $40,000, and each will find more than 45,000 buyers this year, a lucrative market where Buick has no entry.

“Our general philosophy is build where we sell, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Barra said, “but there might be times where a vehicle is very successful somewhere else and we can leverage that capacity.”

Automakers import vehicles to the United States from around the world—GM alone has Canadian, Mexican, Korean and Australian-built models for sale today along with its U.S.-built fleet—but only this year did Volvo became the first major automaker to bring a mass-market vehicle in from China. Part of that reluctance was due to the booming market in China for new vehicles, but executives have also cited American perceptions of shoddy quality toward some—but not all—Chinese-made products.

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Barra says the Envision won’t face that customer backlash because it was engineered in Michigan alongside GM’s other models and built to the same standards GM uses in its factories worldwide.

“That vehicle has done extraordinarily well in China…we need to make sure it meets customer expectations,” Barra said. “Dealers have been the most vocal saying people will want the vehicle. It’s in a sweet spot.”

And at a time when the foreign manufacturing plans of its competitors have become fodder for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, Barra said she wasn’t expecting similar fire.

“I don’t see it becoming a political issue,” she said, “because once you know the facts it’s a very customer-focused decision.”