Good morning! Two years after GM reneged on the Opel sale to Magna and Sperbank, the Times of London has the big scoop. GM cancelled the sale of Opel because the buyers wanted the right to sell its factories to a Russian state-owned car maker, says the Times, citing U.S. diplomatic cables revealed in Wikileaks. Really? You don’t say! We are shocked!

Now if  The Times would have read the highly confidential TTAC, it would have known two years ago that Russia’s GAZ was in on the Magna-Sperbank deal from day one.  A little further reading would have revealed that GM had no problems with GAZ right after the deal collapsed and wanted to “pick up with Magna and GAZ and continue to try to develop this business –but obviously now as part of a GM-retained Opel, not as part of a Magna-Sberbank consortium,” as then GM Group Vice President John Smith said two years ago.  Even more reading would have revealed that the same GAZ has “signed an agreement for the contract assembly of the new Chevrolet Aveo small car at GAZ’s facility in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia” in February. Which caused us to write:

“Remember Oleg Deripaska? The Russian oligarch that had been under suspicion of money laundering and organized crime activities?  The very same Deripaska GM did not want to have close to Opel for fear of losing their precious intellectual property ? Yes, him. GM just handed him the blueprints and the tooling for the Chevy Aveo.”

I don’t know who’s more asleep at the wheel, the Times of London, Wikileaks, or the U.S. Embassy in Berlin that dispatched the cable to Foggy Bottom.