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The improving fortunes of car makers were on display at the Geneva Auto Show as Nissan revealed plans to build a new compact car as BMW and Volkswagen announced strong sales forecasts.
Japan’s No.2 automaker said it would invest $200 million to build its new Invitation from mid-2013 in Sunderland, northeast England. The company said the move, which will be supported by a $15 million loan from Britain, would create a total of 2,000 jobs at Nissan and its suppliers.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Volkswagen is hot on the heels of world number one Toyota, with chief executive Martin Winterkorn saying Europe’s biggest automaker was confident of achieving its target of stealing the crown after strong car deliveries at the start of the year.
And BMW said it expected group sales to grow this year, after a 14 per cent year-on-year increase in February, with a young model range and growth in China and India offsetting a sluggish Europe.
Volkswagen’s upmarket Audi business also expects to grow faster than the four per cent figure predicted for the global market, according to sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer. “We believe we can do better than that,” he said.
Audi believes demand for luxury vehicles in China, where it is the market leader, will continue to expand in coming years. The Chinese luxury market could more than double to 2.3 million cars by 2020 from 945,000 last year, Mr Schwarzenbauer added.
Audi sold more than 200,000 vehicles in the first two months of the year, a record for the company.
Nissan expects initially to produce about 100,000 a year of the new Invitation model. The company already makes its Qashqai and Juke models in Sunderland, the largest car factory in Britain, where it produces around 500,000 vehicles annually.
PSA Peugeot Citroen, meanwhile, showed a different side to the European automotive story, unveiling a cut-price rights issue to fund an alliance with General Motors it hopes will help it accelerate growth in new markets and cut costs on developing new models.
GM’s Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid was named European Car of the Year in Geneva, showing low-emission technology had won over the experts.
However, consumer approval is proving more elusive: earlier this month the carmaker said it was halting production of the plug-in hybrid and laying off 1,300 workers for five weeks this spring, to control stocks of the vehicle in the face of disappointing demand.
