General Motors reveals massive plans for Warsaw FSO

The owner of the factory is still Ukrainian UkrAvto, which was mainly assembling GM-owned Daewoo Lanos and Matiz cars, which were sold in Ukraine under FSO brand. Good cooperation with the Ukrainian investor and quality of Polish labor encouraged the American concern to boost its investments in Poland. The first Chevrolet Aveo cars will leave the FSO plant in October and 4,000 cars will be produced by the end of 2007, but next year production will be boosted to 70,000. Initially the firm considered boosting its investments in Gliwice, but it chose another solution. "Costs were important. It was a few million Euro less," said president of GM Europe Carl Peter Forster. But there is a problem with the Warsaw plant, it has a production limitation due to state subsidies that it received in the past and so the investor is considering reimbursing those expenditures.