No Mini-Buick For Now

General Motors Co., which has floated the idea of a Buick variant of its Opel Adam city car, says the project won't move forward until the just-introduced European minicar gets a major overhaul several years years from now.

The Adam, which sells for $15,300 in Europe, is about the size of a Fiat 500. The highly customizable three-door hatch was unveiled at the Paris auto show last autumn and went into production in Germany in January.

Opel Chairman Karl-Thomas Neumann tells reporters at the Frankfurt auto show this week that GM hopes to integrate Buick and Opel product development in the future. But he adds that the Adam wasn't designed for U.S. safety regulations and cannot be economically modified in its current form.

In June CEO Dan Akerson floated the notion of an Adam variant for Buick. Other GM executives acknowledged on Tuesday that the company is studying the idea. They also ruled out an Americanized Adam until the car receives its first significant engineering update, which isn't likely for at least three years.