Buick Excelle

The Buick Excelle (Chinese: 別克凱越; pinyin: Biékè kǎiyuè) is the common name for the subcompact cars marketed by Shanghai General Motors Company Limited (Chinese: 上海通用汽車有限公司) under GM's Buick brand. It is classified as a compact in China, but by international standards it is a subcompact car. The original Buick Excelle (Chinese "Kai Yue") is based on the Daewoo Lacetti developed in South Korea by Daewoo Motors. While this car was originally sold worldwide under the Daewoo brand, in 2004, General Motors rebranded all Daewoo products in Europe as Chevrolets. Parallel to the Lacetti-based Excelle, Shanghai GM introduced a new car called the Buick Excelle GT in China, but called "Ying Lang" in Chinese. It is based on GM's global compact car platform "Delta II" which is developed at Rüsselsheim in Opel's International Technical Development Center (ITDC). The Chevrolet Cruze is based on this same platform. Since the 2009 economic crises and the subsequent demise of the Saturn brand and reduction of GM's North American brands to four, the Opel models are aligned no longer with the Saturn brand, but the Buick brand. Consequently, the models built and marketed by Buick China are twins of the Opel variants of GM's global platforms while the Lacetti-based Excelle was re-positioned below Buick's newer offerings in the Chinese market. In China, a hatchback called the Buick Excelle XT debuted in 2009, which is essentially a rebadged Astra J. A sedan debuted in 2010 called the Buick Excelle GT (Chinese: 别克英朗GT). An estate car based on the second generation Buick Excelle GT debuted in 2018 called the Buick Excelle GX. In August 2016, Buick decided to end Excelle production despite strong sales, with 2.68 million units sold over the course of 13 years. Citing its low price while the brand moves upmarket as a main...