“The local automotive market will reach some 95,000 cars this year and almost 105,000 cars plus commercial utility vehicles. It will rebound, but only when the loans granted in the 2007-2008 boom period have been paid and customers are willing to take out a loan again,” said Marc Gueudin, general manager of Citroen Romania.
Gueudin took the reins of the importer of the French brand from Didier Gerard early this year and is the third manager of the company in four years.
Sales of Citroen cars fell by 23% in the first nine months of the year compared with the same time last year, and reached a little more than 900 units, according to the statistics of the Association of Automotive Manufacturers and Importers (APIA) on a market of imported cars that shrank by 7%. At the same time, sales of Citroen commercial utility vehicles rose by 121% to over 700 units, at an almost four times higher rate than the entire market’s.
With only one in three cars sold on the local market this year bought through the car fleet renewal scheme one month before it ended, more and more dealers shifted focus towards attracting corporate clients, as individual customers no longer go to showrooms as often as they used to.
Gueudin says the market of individual customers is completely frozen, and the brand finds it difficult to gain new customers because it is not one to sell cheap cars. “We cannot fight Dacia because a Logan can be bought for EUR6,000 or even less.”
Whereas automotive dealers had sold almost 52,000 new cars by the end of October last year, 22,800 over which were Dacia cars, this year, the Environment Fund Agency counted only 25,549 new cars, 8,000 of which assembled in the Dacia plant at Mioveni (southern Romania). Which means the car scrappage scheme only had half the impact of last year and Dacia sold a bit more than one third of the cars it sold last year.
Citroen boss says that the winners of the car scrappage scheme are Dacia, Chevrolet and Opel and the scheme is aimed at those people who do not have too much money and now have even less.
He believes the battle of prices continues on the market, which is good for those that manufacture cars in cheaper countries, such as Turkey.
“There continues to be a battle of prices on the market, [fought] with discounts. We are on this market, too, but there is a certain level beyond which we cannot go because our cars are made in Western Europe. Renault makes cars in Turkey, as well. Second, we don’t want to make low-cost cars,” Gueudin said.