ACROSS EUROPE the next generation of rich confections from luxury-car firms is nowhere to be seen. It may be a temporary condition – restraint in the face of daunting economic headwinds – but the effect is immediate: very little cake will be served at the Paris Motor Show this week.
Instead a menu listing mostly bread-and-butter transportation essentials will dominate car makers’ displays as the show opens tomorrow for two days of press previews.
Organisers claim that the Paris salon, first held in 1898, is the world’s biggest motor show in terms of attendance, with more than 1.2 million visitors in 2010, its most recent run. (Paris alternates with Frankfurt in opening the European show season). The doors open to the public on Saturday, and the show runs until October 14th.
The presentations and product unveilings get under way as Europe’s economy continues to deteriorate, with many car makers on the Continent scaling back sales projections and issuing dark statements about the challenges ahead.
Executives from General Motors have stepped up to tell customers and investors that the company will revive its teetering Opel brand, not sell it. Even as Germany’s top-of-the-market models are setting sales records in the US, in France the government has floated the idea of a tax on luxury automobiles to help the struggling operations of Peugeot, Citroën and Renault.
Surprises are sure to emerge from the news conferences, but statements trickling out ahead of the show’s opening offer little prospect for the fanciful design studies that typically appear in this capital of style consciousness.
Indeed, the important unveilings scheduled for Paris skew towards more mundane economical models, such as the next VW Golf and the redesigned Toyota Auris.
The wide array of calorie-counting new offerings includes Smart’s morsel-size Forstar EV concept, the cheeky Adam microcar from Opel and Mini’s new Paceman. There are hatchback coupés – the i30 from Hyundai and the Pro_cee’d by Kia – that share a platform, a Panda 4x4 from Fiat, a tiny Trax crossover from Chevrolet and even compact SUVs and hatchbacks from premium marques such as Audi and BMW.
That is not to say, however, that the menu is completely fat-free: the British seem to be bringing dessert. Land Rover will display its next-generation Range Rover flagship. Jaguar will pull the wraps off a new sports car, the F-Type, Bentley promises a sporty new model, and McLaren, only recently back in the road-car business, is showing a concept of a second model, the P1.
Jaguar is leveraging the “magical, romantic and culturally rich setting” of Paris, says Fiona Pargeter of Jaguar Land Rover, to introduce the F-Type on the eve of the show at an event featuring the singer Lana Del Rey at the Musée Rodin. But that’s an anomaly: of more than 100 world premieres and European debuts scheduled at the show, only a sprinkling will be aimed at 1 per centers. In fact, Aston Martin, which has two important new models coming out, the DB9 and Vanquish, is skipping Paris.
“We will wait until Geneva,” Matthew Clarke, an Aston Martin spokesman, says in an email. The Geneva event, held each March, is typically seen in the world of auto shows as a friendlier haven for the supercar crowd.
Clarke says Aston Martin generally expects to take a significant number of orders for new cars at Geneva. At Paris? Not so much. It seems more like a crowd of window shoppers, tyre kickers and wishful thinkers.
In fact, France’s car and light-vehicle orders, a precursor to delivery trends, declined for the fourth month. Many car makers have engaged in ruinous price wars in an effort to draw buyers back into showrooms. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Renault’s orders were down another 20 per cent in August; Citroën was down 5.3 per cent and Peugeot was off 9 per cent. Toyota and Fiat orders plunged a further 24 per cent, Ford dropped 16 per cent, and even Volkswagen, the volume leader, fell 5 per cent.
Ford was pummelled not only in France, Europe’s second-largest car market, but across the Continent. Its 29 per cent sales drop last month in 27 countries across Europe was the worst among major car makers; the company said it expected to lose more than €770 million in Europe for the year.
The company is counting on halting the flow of red ink with the introduction of key new products such as the mid-size Mondeo.
Cost-cutting is very much on the minds of car makers these days. Even Porsche, which is unveiling an estate version of its Panamera saloon in Paris, says it may pull back one or two planned new models to preserve profits.
The once-rapid push towards electric cars seems to have slowed. But almost every manufacturer is promoting new technologies to conserve fuel use, whether it be through engine-idle stop-start options, hybrid powertrains or rapid weight-loss programmes. Land Rover, for instance, says its new Range Rover is more than 400kg lighter than the version it replaces. The new Bentley is said to be a lightweight sports coupé. And VW is claiming its newest Golf will shed 100kg compared with its predecessor.
Perhaps the show’s most unusual introduction involves not a car but a sculpture. As a teaser for next year’s anticipated redesign of its S-Class, Mercedes-Benz is presenting “an artistic glimpse of the design of the luxury saloon of the foreseeable future”. The car’s silhouette is rendered in a bas-relief panel that will be creatively lit. Closer to reality, the company is also unveiling an electrified concept of its B-Class small car that will go on sale in 2014. – New York Times
Keep up to date
The Paris Motor Show, which kicks off tomorrow with press preview days, will be a major barometer for the health of the industry. In spite of being in crisis mode, both Peugeot and Citroën will be there in force, with an electric DS3 and a hybrid supercar concept, among others. There will be other big debuts from Jaguar, BMW and Volkswagen. The Irish Times Motors blog will bring all the big stories as they happen at irishtimes.com/motors, and we'll have a full run down of the show in next week's Motors.