Top 5 Chevy Moments Of All Time: #3 First Plant Outside US

GM International announced the establishment of an assembly plant in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October of 1923. The establishment of the assembly plant was the result of GM International’s intent to distribute products in overseas markets as economic conditions warranted. It’s the first Chevy plant outside the US.

The announcement stated that Chevrolet cars would be assembled in Denmark and stocks of parts would be carried through the headquarters, located in Copenhagen. This new plant was designed to market cars in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Holland.

Shipping the parts via freighters traveling across the ocean was far more cost effective than shipping entire cars. This is where the assembly plant came into to play on the receiving end.

The first vehicle actually produced outside of the United States and Canada was a Chevrolet truck which left the production line on January 7, 1924. The plant did so well that a second assembly plant was set up in Antwerp, Belgium. The first Chevrolet assembled there left the plant on April of 1925.

While Chevrolets had been manufactured in Canada for several years by a GM subsidiary called General Motors Company of Canada Unlimited, it was independently owned until incorporated under Chapter 79 of the Revised Statutes of Canada.

From 1924 through 1951, the assembly plant at Copenhagen produced 201,492 GM vehicles, of which 122,737 were Chevrolets.

In 1955, approximately 1,200 employees were working at the Copenhagen factory, by which time had 65,000 square meters of floor and a production capacity of 10 cars per hour. General Motors International closed in 1974, along with the assembly plant, with more than 550,000 total Danish carts behind them according to The Danish wikipedia page on General Motors International.