News from GM Europe

The Opel Meriva has achieved the lowest defect rate in the 2007 TÜV report. Introduced in 2003 and now tested for the first time (first general inspection is three years after initial registration), the Meriva immediately established itself as the top performer in this quality check. 113 different models with ages up to three years are indexed. Faults were only found in 1.8 percent of the bestselling Opel Merivas that were checked. The industry average was at 5.9 percent.



“Our comprehensive quality initiative is clearly paying off,” says Opel Managing Director Hans H. Demant. “There is hardly a better indicator than this success achieved by one of our newest models. And the overall results for the Opel model range show that we are on the right track.”

Compared to last year’s results, almost all of Opel’s models improved significantly in the 2007 TÜV report, both in the rankings as well as the defect rate percentages. In addition to the Meriva, the Corsa (4.4 percent), Vectra (4.5 percent), Agila (4.8 percent) and Astra (5.1 percent) are all better positioned than the industry average. This puts all the models in the low defect-rate category.

The Meriva’s victory is even more significant considering that a model rarely achieves a defect rate of less than 2 percent, and the next placed competitors scored well over this figure.

The TÜV report is released by the independent German Technical Inspection Agency (TÜV) and is extremely well respected in Germany. The report records the results of all general inspections that were conducted according to the German Road Traffic Regulations (StVZO) by TÜV test centers. The 2007 report covers the period from July 2005 through June 2006 and is based on the results of over seven million vehicle checks during this period.

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