By way of Russia, Canada and Germany, the two Vauxhall plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port have new owners: Magna International and Sberbank.
With the German elections at the end of the month, the decision to sell GM Europe/Opel was always a potent mix of politics and business.
The deal leaves the Luton plant - a joint venture with Renault - still vulnerable to job losses or cuts when the current model production ends 2013.
For the now, the jobs are apparently safe as Magna consider the 'economics' of the two UK plants.
But Vauxhall and its workers - and the UK auto industry as a whole - would sleep better if government decided to set out and implement a long-term strategy to grow a sustainably competitive low-carbon vehicles industry in this country.
It couldn't do much better than simply adopting the 20 year vision by the New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team. Some of their short-term ideas have already been adopted. Companies making long-term investment decisions would probably like to see the entire blueprint become government policy as well.