GM set to make Singapore comeback in July after it inks deal with local distributor

SINGAPORE – American multinational company General Motors (GM) is set to make its Singapore comeback in July 2025 with a $650,000 supercar, eight years after it stopped offering Chevrolet mass-market cars in Singapore.

The Chevrolet Corvette is a high-performance sports car. Its arrival will pave the way for other GM-owned brands and models to be sold here, said an industry expert.

Local diversified motor company Alpine Group signed the agreement to sell GM vehicles in Singapore in February, according to Mr Keith Pang, the company’s director.

Its subsidiary, Alpine Motors, was Chevrolet’s distributor until 2017 when the American brand pulled out from the market.

The company’s contract to handle warranty claims and repairs of Chevrolet cars ended in 2019.

After the launch in July of the internal combustion engine, two-seater Corvette that is expected to cost around $650,000 with the certificate of entitlement (COE), Alpine will bring in the petrol-hybrid version of the car in 2026. This is likely to be priced at around $900,000 with COE, said Mr Pang.

This is a different type of vehicle from the mass-market and family-friendly Chevrolet models that used to be sold here.

Although there were a handful of Corvettes brought in by parallel importers, this is the first time that the sports car will be available in Singapore through an official distributorship.

Relaunching GM with an upmarket model like the Corvette is a sound strategy, said Mr Mahaendra Gofar, an automotive industry insider for more than 25 years.

“With the Corvette as the halo car, GM can follow up with models that have more mass-market appeal,” said the executive who has worked at car companies in China, Germany and Singapore before his current role advising automotive outfits in Indonesia.

Mr Gofar said that GM’s renewed interest in this part of the world may have been partly fuelled by sales volume falling in China due to stiff competition from Chinese car brands like BYD.

Besides Chevrolet, GM has three other passenger car brands in its stable: Buick, GMC and Cadillac.

While Buick is sold mainly in China, which uses left-hand drive models, Cadillac and GMC currently have right-hand drive cars that are sold in places like Australia, but not in South-east Asia yet.

Cadillac is GM’s premium brand pitched against the likes of Lexus, Audi and BMW, while GMC is known for its sport utility vehicles with very large engines, which traditionally do not sell well in Singapore.

Although Chevrolet is widely available in the US, its current models do not have right-hand drive versions yet.

GM pulled out of Singapore in 2017 because its Chevrolet models did not comply with the stricter emission standards that were coming into force then.

Around that period, the American auto group was also actively cutting back operations to stem losses. This included selling off the Opel brand to another automotive group, Stellantis, and closing factories in India and Australia.

Chevrolet will be the second American car brand since 2021 to be officially sold in Singapore by authorised distributors, after Tesla opened its doors here in 2021.

Ford, which is also American, now sells only pickup trucks, while Jeep currently does not have a dealer here after its agent, Capella Auto, sold off its stock in February and stopped representing the American brand in Singapore.