The attention of the international press has focused the most on Dacia Sandero, Logan, Volkswagen Golf VII and on the new Ford Mondeo.
The Paris Motor Show has increasingly lost its sparkle over the past few editions. The crisis and the economic situation of constructors in France have had an increasing impact on the shows, as premieres and the launch of new concepts have dwindled.
Dacia’s stand was covered by the French press from early in the morning. TF2 television channel showed footage of the new models from 6 AM, with Dacia being the second brand presented after Peugeot.
Despite having a small stand, Dacia stood out not only through its new models, but also through its new 0.9-liter, three-cylinder, 90-horsepower, turbocharged engine that will power the new Logan and Sandero models.
The previous Dacia model launched in Paris was Logan MCV, which at the time was the first Dacia model to be launched on the Western-European market and which sold much higher volumes than Sandero and Duster.
The exhibition area of the Paris Motor Show is over 180,000 sq m this year, with car stands covering almost 100,000 sq m. The 2012 edition will host over 100 international premieres from 253 car manufacturers in 23 countries. They will be analyzed by the over 13,000 journalists present in the first two days dedicated to the press, as well as by the over 1.3 million visitors expected in the next 18 days.
Among the premieres are cars with incorporated PC tablets, such as Nissan Xterra, as well as sports cars with several hundred horsepower whose average consumption is typical to a city car, such as the Peugeot Onyx concept. At the previous Paris Motor Show in 2010, Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of directors of Daimler and head of the Mercedes-Benz brand, said that edition was a historic one, the last one before larger-scale manufacturing of electric cars.
With electric cars losing some of their appeal, the public focuses again on sports cars, as well as on the new generations of some of the best-selling cars.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)