The official sports utility vehicle, manufactured by General Motors (GM), of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)’s annual “March Madness” tournament is manufactured in China.
Last week, Buick – a division of GM – announced that Buick Envision will be the official SUV of March Madness in 2021.
Get rid of and get ready to #EnvisionGreatness. The brand new Buick Envision. Official SUV of March Madness. pic.twitter.com/cU9Ecwr7u3
– Buick (@ Buick) 17 March 2021
The Buick Envision was built in China and imported to the US market for sale. GM Authority reported in May 2020:
The Buick Envision of 2021 debuted yesterday and launches a brand new second generation for the nameplate. Now, GM Authority has confirmed that the next generation model will be built in China. [Emphasis added]
According to our sources, the 2021 Buick Envision will be manufactured at the SAIC-GM Jinqiao South plant in China. From there, the new Envision will be shipped to each of the four markets where the Buick brand is available, including the US, Canada and Mexico (which includes the North American market), as well as to China. [Emphasis added]
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For reference, the first generation Buick Envision was also produced in China, but in another factory, namely the SAIC-GM Dongyue North plant. Like the 2021 Envision, the first generation model was also sold in China and throughout North America. [Emphasis added]
In November 2018, John Carney, editor of Breitbart News Economics, encouraged GM to start manufacturing its Buick Envisions in the US rather than China.
“The Envision is the first car built in China for the American market. “Last year, Americans bought 42,000 Envisions, which are made through a joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor, a state-owned Chinese carmaker,” Carney wrote:
However, China is now the largest market for General Motors. Last year, the company sold 4,040,789 vehicles there. And China has high tariffs on cars and other requirements that make the export of cars to China anything but impossible. General Motors’ “we build where we sell” policy is a requirement in China.
But it would be a much simpler matter to just bring back the US portion of Envision manufacturing to the US. The basic architecture of the Envision is the same as the earlier Chevy Volt, built during the Detroit-Hamtramck meeting. plant that the company announced by the end of next year.
“It will probably not require a huge amount of reprocessing to keep the plant open and Envisions open,” he concluded.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Send an email to him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.