Captive Import - Other Markets

Other Markets

In Europe, there have been relatively few cases of captive imports, and most have been unsuccessful. The Chevrolet Venture minivan was sold as the Opel/Vauxhall Sintra in the late-1990s, but was not only not to European tastes, but also gained a bad reputation due to poor results in safety tests. The practice has been revived by PSA Peugeot Citroën with the Peugeot 4007, Peugeot 4008, Citroën C-Crosser and Citroën C4 Aircrosser, which are rebadged versions of the Mitsubishi Outlander and Mitsubishi RVR.

In Brazil, the Australian-built Holden Commodore is sold since 1998 as Chevrolet Omega, replacing the locally built car bearing the same name. Despite being well received by the press and public, sales are much worse than its locally-built counterpart, simply because of its high price. However, it is used very often as official government cars. Chevrolet also rebranded the Argentine-built Suzuki Vitara as the Chevrolet Tracker after Suzuki stopped selling cars in Brazil, but it never achieved the same selling numbers from the original car.

In Japan, where foreign car manufacturers have traditionally struggled to compete in the local market, even rebadging of U.S. models like the Chevrolet Cavalier as a Toyota have failed to improve sales. In some cases, this can be attributed to the manufacturer's lack to attention to the desires of the Japanese consumer, even to so basic a requirement as availability with right hand drive.

In Australia, GM's Holden operation sold the 1975-84 Isuzu Bellett/Gemini, itself a license built version of the then current Opel Kadett, as the Holden Gemini. Interestingly the name was originally Holden-Isuzu Gemini but after the initial TX series the Isuzu cobranding was dropped. Perhaps the original idea was to foster the Japanese-ness of the model at a time when that might have been seen by customers as a positive, the Nissan's 610 Bluebird being marketed as the Datsun 180B being a big seller at the time. But given the Gemini was assembled in Australia at Acacia Ridge in Queensland and Holden was still the highest selling brand (and selling its other cars on their Australian-ness) it was probably more beneficial and clearer to use the Australian identity. The Chevrolet LUV produced by Isuzu was also sold from 1973 for a couple of years, the only official Chevrolet branded model available in Australia at the time (and since). Also, Ford sold the Taurus in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong in 1996, but discontinued it for 1999 because of poor success. In 1998, another successful American vehicle built by GM, the Chevrolet Suburban, was marketed in Australia as a rebadged Holden Suburban with intentions to launch the full-sized SUV in a country that was used to having small to mid-sized SUVs, but because it was a large SUV and given its wide body size it proved to be a failure and was discontinued in 2001.