Citing analysts, the US website The Car Connection (TCC) says that despite a lack of a North American marketing presence, Peugeot-Citroen boasts the highest shareholder returns on investment of any major European car maker.
TCC also says that achievement, combined with the fact that Peugeot#;s 14 plants are running at 115 percent of capacity on three shifts, has stirred interest in whether the Paris-based automaker finally might be ready to “globalise.”
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TCC says Peugeot-Citroen could go global by going the Renault-Nissan route with its small-car development partner Toyota or its diesel engine research partner, Ford.
Or, says TCC, “Peugeot-Citroen could recycle its foreign sales programme and re-enter the North American market it abandoned in the late 1980s” when it stopped selling the Peugeot 405 and withdrew. Citroen sales ceased some years earlier.
TCC said that four of every five vehicles Peugeot-Citroen builds are sold in Europe, the company is heading for three million sales this year and four million by 2004 – and PSA Group president Jean-Martin Folz, who has greatly improved build quality, isn#;t in a hurry to change that.
Meanwhile, Renault is reluctant to return to the US, which it abandoned in the early 1990s after a long tie-up with American Motors and, after a merger, Chrysler.
A spokesman at the Geneva show told just-auto that the costs of engineering cars and re-establishing a dealer network for the US were prohibitive.
Renault, he said, would leave the US presence to its well-established partner Nissan.
