General Motors (GM) Middle East announced an overall growth in sales performance in 2023 year-on-year (yoy), across Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac, driven by its ambidextrous regional business strategy. Spearheaded by its subsequent brands’ elevated performances across region, celebrating landmark numbers for individual nameplates, including the GMC Acadia, GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Traverse, Cadillac CT4, Cadillac CT5, and Cadillac Escalade.
Each GM brand continues to provide the region with vehicle nameplates that consumers hold an affinity to, underscoring GM’s commitment to continue delivering internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, as we work toward a smart and emission-free future.
Chevrolet
This year, Chevrolet’s popular nameplates achieved record sales, driven by the Chevrolet Traverse with a 67% rise and Chevrolet Tahoe by 28% yoy, marking their highest sales since 2012 and 2017, respectively. Additionally, the success of full-sized SUVs and pickups continued with the legendary Chevrolet Silverado at 26% increase yoy. Moreover, the top regional markets marking significant growth included the UAE, Iraq and Oman.
GMC
GMC further fed into the brand’s overall strong market performance, seeing its highest aggregate sales since 2016 with a 15% yoy growth. The GMC Acadia peaked in performance compared to the pre-pandemic era in 2019, while the GMC Yukon marked its highest sales volume in nearly a decade with an 11% increase in 2023. Meanwhile, the powerful GMC Sierra pickup achieved a 14% boost in sales performance, yoy. The highest growth markets for GMC were UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Cadillac
Cadillac, GM’s luxury brand, continued its regional growth trajectory marking the second highest sales since 2017. Contributing to the success was the Cadillac CT4, which outpaced forecasts to achieve the strongest figures for the brand across the year with an exponential rise of 305%, while the Cadillac CT5 achieved its second highest annual sales on record. The market preference for Cadillac nameplates was further strengthened as the Cadillac Escalade and recently launched Cadillac Escalade-V both secured record-breaking sales. Meanwhile, the biggest growth markets for Cadillac included the UAE, Oman, Iraq, Qatar, and Jordan.
OnStar
The performance success extended to General Motor’s pioneering connectivity technology – OnStar, which enables users to experience a seamless drive offering elevated entertainment, communication capability and safety. 2023 noted a 15% growth in activations of OnStar across UAE and Kuwait, with a promising start to 2024 with the recent launch in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in late 2023.
Aftersales
On the Customer Care and Aftersales front, GM’s commitment to customer satisfaction furthered, leading to notable advancements in aftersales operations. This focus has resulted in record-breaking customer retention, surpassing those of 2022. Moreover, the double-digit growth in GM’s spare parts business is a testament to this success.
Additionally, GM Middle East’s world-class training center has been recognized with the prestigious Brandon Hall Gold and Silver awards for the company’s annual Dealer Technicians Skill Competition and the Electric Vehicle Learning Journey. On the marketing front, the team earned the esteemed Effie Award for an impactful marketing campaign. Such accolades underscore GM’s unwavering commitment to excellence in every facet of its operations, from customer service to technical training and marketing.”
Jack Uppal, President & Managing Director at General Motors Africa & Middle East shared, “As we lay the foundation for a more connected, electric and autonomous future of mobility, GM Middle East’s long-term strategy is to continue to deliver exciting and capable vehicles that the region has grown to love, as evident by our year-on-year healthy growth.
“Forging ahead toward our vision of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion, we look forward to another year of milestones towards our contributions in EV and AV infrastructure, community education, and building consumer confidence for a seamless transition. This is not an effort we aim to undertake alone, as we will continue to explore collaborative routes with public and private partners, regional governments, and regulators within our journey towards the next chapter of mobility,” emphasized Jack Uppal.
2023 saw GM stride closer to bringing everybody into its vision for the future of mobility – evidenced by the testing of autonomous vehicle technology via the partnership between the GM majority-backed Cruise and Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority. In tandem, GM actively laid the foundation for change through innovative educational efforts highlighting the benefits of EVs and their adoption, in partnership with think tank Harvard Business Review Arabia.
GM further worked to elevate the pipeline of STEM talent regionally, feeding into a future ready workforce. To encourage an understanding of the benefits of innovation, the brand aligned with regional governments and the Arab youth, via collaborations with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Arab Youth Centre, offering exposure to senior spokespeople, as well as one on one mentorship and training opportunities.
The envisioned future of mobility is one rooted in inclusivity, as seen across GM’s year-long efforts towards working with people of determination and creating wider positive community impact. This came to life in 2023 through a collaboration with SEDRA Foundation and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) for people of determination. In terms of GM Middle East’s active role in corporate social responsibility, a partnership was established with Emirates Foundation, commencing with the recently announced ‘Ideathon’ – in a bid to create awareness on the importance of volunteering within the sustainability space.
Looking ahead at the pipeline for 2024, GM Middle East will continue to deliver on its ambidextrous strategy, launching an exciting new range of vehicles. This includes the GMC HUMMER EV sports utility truck (SUT) and sports utility vehicle (SUV), the all-new GMC Acadia and Canyon as well as the Chevrolet Traverse. Meanwhile, Cadillac will introduce refreshed models of the XT4 luxury entry crossover, and the CT5, its award-winning mid-size sports sedan. Continued development across public-private collaborations will see further change made accessible to the regional community, reshaping the norms of transport and via innovation and reimagined customer experiences.
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