This week is probably best described as a mixed bag, full of interesting, mostly positive and wide-ranging news.
Resident product guru Glenn Brooks’ exclusive story on Ford Europe delaying the EcoSport small SUV launch for unspecified reasons attracted a lot of interest from our readers, and even brought a request for more info from a major national daily newspaper. I suspect the success of this attractive little vehicle has caught its maker a bit by surprise – I’ve seen recent reports of lengthy order books in India (an early launch market where the local industry talks ‘bookings’ rather than ‘orders’) and I suspect it will also attract huge interest in the many other markets for which it is destined over the next year or so, with supplies to meet that demand also coming – now or soon – from other plants in Thailand, Brazil, Russia and China. Ford is no doubt noting how well GM is doing with the rival Chevy/Opel/Vauxhall/Buick Trax/Mokka/Encore – Korean production reportedly cannot keep up with worldwide demand.
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Simon Warburton, meanwhile, has been out in Worcester to hear the first major speech by new Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) CEO Mike Dawes (a fellow Antipodean, as it happens) who, understandably, was pretty bullish about the current state of play at British Carmaking plc after a pretty good output tally for what was once the quiet ‘factory holiday’ month of August though the reality check from KPMG about August 2012 is worth noting to put it all in perspective. Apart from lots of new cars on the road, boosted by the recent half-year change to ’63’ licence plates, there are other signs such as the recruiting posters for Jaguar Land Rover’s new engine manufacturing and R&D centres in Coventry and Wolverhampton I spotted in Birmingham Airport this week.
Chris Wright headed for what was apparently a very nice lunch in London at which the guest speaker was PSA’s Peugeot brand chief Maxime Picat. His comment – “We are now selling 45% of our vehicles outside Europe against 25% a year ago. As our home markets stagnate, we need to concentrate more on emerging and growing markets” – is very similar to what rival Renault has been saying regularly for at least the last two years.
Automakers continue to spend big to boost production to supply markets where there is demand – this week Ford announced a $US700m retooling of its Oakville, Ontario plant in (high labour cost) Canada; Toyota is boosting output in Argentina (some of its first exports back in the 1950s were to neighbouring Brazil where one of the first overseas assembly plants was subsequently constructed); and Russia to build the RAV4 from 2016; Renault is gearing up to build cars with a local partner in Indonesia from 2015; and VW Group is finalising plans to spend some of its profits on its plant in Brazil to build the new Golf (it’s still making the Mark IV there) and restart local Audi output with the A3 saloon line.
Capping off a week of (mostly) good news: Saab’s new owners built their first pre-production revived 9-3 in Sweden.
That’ll do me. Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
