General Motors Turns to Europe for Its Future : Autos: New Chairman Robert C. Stempel said a major expansion in sales and manufacturing is planned. He also outlined a cutback in management.

General Motors, traditionally dominated by its U.S. auto business, is now counting on its European and other international operations to generate much of its growth for the 1990s, company executives indicated Wednesday.

GM officials hinted at further cutbacks in the firm’s struggling U.S. car operations but said they expect to expand the firm’s auto-making capacity in the booming Western European market--where GM is already a major player--by 25% over the next five years. At the same time, GM is moving rapidly to establish manufacturing and sales operations in Eastern Europe.

Wednesday was the first day in office for GM’s new chairman, Robert C. Stempel, who succeeded the controversial Roger B. Smith, who retired Tuesday. Stempel, along with the rest of the firm’s top executives--all of whom also have assumed new positions--held an introductory press conference at GM headquarters here. Stempel outlined a new and more streamlined top-level organizational chart that he said would reduce the layers of management at GM. And he also noted the increasing influence that GM’s highly successful European operations are having on the company’s American organization.

“We’re trying to make our domestic operations more like our international operations,” Stempel said, referring to his management shuffling.

Meanwhile, GM Vice Chairman John F. Smith, who has been put in charge of all of GM’s international operations by Stempel, said the corporation is already starting to reap big benefits from its unusually quick decision to capitalize on the collapse of communism in most of Eastern Europe. In East Germany, Smith said, GM sold 4,000 cars in July alone and has taken in a total of 17,000 customer orders. The company has also signed up 350 new dealers in East Germany. Smith added that the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the flow of people from East Germany to West Germany has also led to a boom in car sales in West Germany; GM sales there are up 33% over last year.

In fact, in contrast to its sales slump in the United States, GM’s only real problem in Europe is a shortage of car-making capacity. GM officials concede that the shortage may make it difficult for the company to keep up the torrid pace of sales and profit by its European operations during the last year.

But the company’s recent acquisition of the auto operations of Saab of Sweden have helped ease the pressure on Adam-Opel, GM’s European automotive subsidiary. At the same time, Saab also “gives us an entry into the premium car market in Europe,” Smith said.

To further hike production, Opel is also trying to convert its West European assembly plants from operating on a two-shift-a-day basis to a more efficient three shifts a day.

In addition, by October GM will open its first car-making operation in East Germany, where partially built cars will be shipped from the West for final assembly. GM hopes to have a stand-alone assembly operation running in East Germany by the second quarter of 1992, Smith added.

GM is also developing engine and transmission manufacturing plants in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Smith said those facilities could become the basis for broader manufacturing operations in Eastern Europe in the future.

GM is also looking to expand its exports from the United States and Latin America to satisfy the booming demand in Europe. The auto maker is already exporting transmissions and other components from both the United States and Brazil so Opel can keep its plants running.

Smith also said GM expects to export its new U.S.-built Saturn small cars to Europe. Those exports probably won’t come in the first year of Saturn’s production, however. The Saturn plant just turned out its first car this week, and Saturns will go on sale in this country in the fall.

GM expects to export about 112,000 cars built in the United States and Canada to overseas markets this year and hopes to increase its exports to between 200,000 and 250,000 by the mid-1990s, Smith said.