The month of December is generally one of the quieter ones in the automotive news reporting calendar, but there was plenty going on last week to keep our minds off the festive season.

General Motors decided to take the Chevy out of Europe and Ford said it wanted to take a new Mustang into Europe. In Sweden, a car and brand that we thought had spluttered out and died appeared to be reincarnated and Jaguar Land Rover announced another significant expansion plan. There’s rarely a dull moment for us.

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Europe’s car market has been pretty brutal for a while now, 20% down on pre-crisis levels. Will it get better in 2014? The forecasters are being pretty cautious. The German automotive trade association VDA says Western Europe’s car market can look forward to 2% growth next year.

The folks at LMC Automotive concur; they forecast a 2.6% gain.

That means a European car market next year broadly in line with 2012’s, so it’s not exactly breakneck pace for recovery. And that means trading conditions will continue to be tough. General Motors has not been in a good place in Europe for a while. Losing money is one thing, but there has been a feeling for a while now that something has not quite worked out in offering Chevrolet vehicles as well as Opel/Vauxhall in such a distressed market. A bullet was finally bitten and GM announced last week that it would discontinue Chevrolet in Europe (except Russia). Read our coverage and comment here.

In Barcelona, Ford hosted a gathering for dealers, employees and journalists, where it proudly proclaimed the latest Mustang as a halo car that it will sell in Europe. I can’t imagine it will sell very many, but it does look good and that’s the point. Next year will mark the half-century since that first ‘Stang – now that was an absolute beaut of a car.

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Elsewhere, Jaguar Land Rover continued its global expansion and announced a manufacturing facility for Brazil and there was that eyebrow raising news from Sweden. It will be interesting to see how well the new company does. If the travails of Saab are any guide, it won’t be easy, but we wish them well.

We also heard an upbeat view of how the future for the British automotive sector could look in a few years’ time and Audi continues to flesh out new product for new market niches.

Oh, and the US car market notched up another pretty good month in November.

Have a good weekend!

Dave Leggett

Editor, just-auto.com