American car manufacturer General Motors Co announced that it has decided to pull out its Opel unit from the Chinese market starting next January.

The decision, GM said, was long overdue considering that Opel has not created substantial interest among Chinese car buyers, having only sold 4,356 units in China last year. The figure is just a tiny fraction of the 800,000 sold by Buick brand, another GM unit.

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Opel only has 22 dealers in China and CEO Karl Thomas Neumann said it will cost GM hundreds of millions of dollars to market the Opel brand and expand its network of distributors in the world's largest car market.

Neumann said the Opel sales in China will officially end on January 2015.

Despite its pulling out from the huge Chinese auto market, Opel will be investing US$370 million to expand its main plant in Germany. The company announced plans to produce additional Opel model at its German plant.

While considered as the biggest car market in the world, China has been a tough market for car dealers both domestic and foreign due to stiff competition.

In the first two months of this year alone, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said some 3.2 million vehicles were sold in the country, or 11 percent higher compared to the same period in the previous year.

Foreign manufactures continue to lord it over the local market as sales of domestic brands fell one percent to just 1.2 million vehicles during the January-February period.

GM, Ford, and Toyota reported a sales increase during the period, CAAM said.

Sales growth this year is expected to drop to about 8 to 10 percent from last year's 15.7 percent, the association said.