Renault Type RA Cabriolet by Million-Guiet, page #24

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Fiat contemplating sub-brand to compete with Dacia, Datsun

You can add Fiat to the admittedly short list of automakers considering a low-cost brand to rival Dacia. The inexpensive Eastern European brand from Renault-Nissan has performed on the balance sheet like a premium model line, and the money the alliance is taking off the table is encouraging other players to deal themselves in. Pretty soon Nissan's Datsun sub-brand will join the Dacia party, going on sale in Russia, Indonesia and India and will claim even more rubles, rupiahs and rupees for the parent company. Volkswagen recently said it will make a decision this year on a budget line for the Chinese market. With the euthanasia of Lancia and plans to move the Fiat brand upmarket, company CEO Sergio Marchionne wonders aloud to Automotive News Europe whether there could be room for a new budget brand underneath Fiat.
We're told that the initiative has been in the idea box for five years and even moved to the stage of name considerations, like Innocenti, but worries about profit kept it from realization. If such a range were to be developed, Marchionne says it couldn't be built in Italy and stay within budget, and the company is "analyzing its manufacturing capacity outside of Europe to see if a low-cost brand is viable."

Renault brings Captur from concept to reality with new CUV

Renault has officially brought the Captur Concept to life with a new small crossover. The production version has abandoned the wild scissor doors and bulbous fenders of the concept in favor of a more mature five-door configuration.
Based on the Renault Clio, the Captur offers buyers a range of gasoline and diesel engines. While the automaker hasn't served up any drivetrain specifics, we'd be surprised if the Captur option sheet didn't come littered with the same powerplants as its cousin, including a turbocharged .9-liter three-cylinder and a 1.2-liter turbocharged gasoline engine as well as a 1.5-liter diesel. A six-speed dual-clutch transmission handles shifting duties in all applications.
The Captur will be built at the Renault facility in Valladolid, Spain. Expect to see the machine receive an official unveil at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show in March. Until then, you can take a closer look at the full press release below, and be sure to click through the complete gallery here as well.

Dacia brand has become "cash cow" for parent Renault

No one, not even former Renault CEO Louis Schweitzer whose idea it was to buy Dacia in 1999, had any idea the low-cost Eastern European sub-brand would succeed this well. The Romanian automaker with three wheels in the ground at the time of its takeover was purchased the same year that Renault took its stake in Nissan, and no one had much to say about that smaller deal. Fast forward 13 years, the line that began with the Logan in 2004 is now five model lines on sale in 36 countries, it's year-on-year sales have never decreased and the vehicles built on its M0 entry-level platform sold nearly a million units in 2012. This isn't just an emerging-market story, either, with Dacia branded offerings making up 17 percent of Renault volume in Western Europe.
Its rampaging sales and the synergies between the Renault and Dacia lines have turned the brand into a "cash cow" in the words of Renault's COO. Its vehicles share a huge number of parts, many of which are still carryover nine years into the brand's life, and parts of the recently introduced second-generation Logan are evolved from the 1990 Renault Clio. In fact, due to amortization and decreased prices for parts because of the massive sales, the new Logan is less expensive to produce than the first generation, so it was given new equipment along with the refresh in order to maintain its price.
The news is even better in other regions, where the Dacia can command more money on its own or can be sold under the Renault or Nissan brands. The Duster in Western Europe that starts at 12,000 euros starts at 19,000 euros in Brazil. That's how Dacia, according to a Morgan Stanley analyst, returns a worldwide nine-percent operating margin as opposed to Renault's 0.4-percent. What lies ahead is more models and variants, as well as a modular strategy for the M0 platform to further reduce costs, and, one supposes, even more money from that Romanian cow.

Renault will have new Alpine ready by end of 2015

We earlier reported that Renault's revival of the Alpine name would take four years. But Stephen Norman, head of marketing for Renault, says to expect the first new Alpine sometime before the end of 2015.
Norman also tells Autocar that the Alpine jointly developed with Caterham "won't be more hardcore than a Mazda MX-5." He went on to say we should expect a competitor for the Porsche Boxster and high-performance Audi TTS. "You can't betray the DNA of Alpine," Norman says. "That's a third of what the car will be."

Renault appoints Dacia Logan creator to head its Nano-rival program in India

After watching the Tata Nano post sales numbers smaller than its engine displacement, Renault gave up on its much publicized intention to build a truly inexpensive car to rival it. Then, a month ago, reports emerged that Renault was resuming work on a couple of low-priced cars for emerging markets, but this time it would work with its in-house partner, Nissan. That plan envisions an offering for €3,000 ($3,888 US) and another for €5,000 ($6,400 US), both of which would be more spendy than the Nano but might avoid the charge of being cheap - and nasty - and instead be considered affordable.
A report in Reuters talks to the man in charge, Gerard Detourbet, who has been in Chennai, India since at least August working on the program. Detourbet led the Dacia Logan project and is considered "Renault's low-cost car specialist" and "the father of entry-car programs." This one is reportedly codenamed A-Entry and will create a "'sub-entry' architecture" that will provide roominess beyond the vehicle's price and class, and use an engine with a displacement of 800 cubic centimeters.
It isn't aimed at the Nano, though - it means to take on the products that make up 45-50 percent of India's car market, like the Maruti Suzuki Alto and Hyundai Eon. According to Reuters, out of the 2.6-million-strong Indian car market the Maruti Suzuki line-up alone nabs one million registrations annually. The Alto 800 begins at 244,000 rupees ($4,440 US), the Eon at 300,000 rupees ($5,559 US), the Chevrolet Spark at about 316,000 ($5,750 US); if Renault can nail its price targets it will just about bracket those three and be right in the game.

EU formally questions French government assistance of Peugeot's finance arm

Recently, the finance arm of PSA/Peugeot-Citroën was in such debt trouble that it was pricing itself out of the car loan market. The rates it was paying to service its debt, which was rated one step above junk, were so high that it was forced to charge car-buying customers higher rates than they could find elsewhere. This was adding to Peugeot's already impressive woes by sending revenue out the door to competitors.
Two months ago a deal was worked out with the French government whereby the state would provide 7 billion euro ($9 billion USD) in bonds to guarantee the finance arm's loans. The French government could nominate someone to join the Peugeot board, Peugeot would guarantee more French jobs, and on top of that deal, other banks would provide non-guaranteed loans. The government would take no equity stake in the car company.
Although not yet finalized, the arrangement is meant to create some breathing room for Peugeot Finance to lower its interest rates for customers, and a government-nominated board member, Louis Gallois, was recently named to Peugeot's supervisory board. The arrangement was also openly questioned by at least three competitors: Ford, Renault - which is 15-percent owned by the French government after it received state aid - and the German state of Lower Saxony, itself a 15-percent shareholder in Volkswagen.

End of the road for French flagship sedans as Citro"en C6 production winding down

Even if their avant-garde styling has historically meant that they would never enjoy the sales success of their more staid German counterparts, it was always somehow comforting to know that the French were building large sedans. With a history of nontraditional looks and peerless ride quality (a legacy built on the hydropneumatic suspension of the original Citroën DS), big French cars have always been an acquired taste.
And now it appears buyers with that specific palette won't have a clear place to go, at least for a while. According to Automotive News, production of the Citroën C6 shown above (click to enlarge) is scheduled to cease this month, leaving French buyers (and Francophiles) without a true-bleu option. As the article points out, Renault will still offer its Latitude - effectively a badge-engineered rework of the Korean-built Samsung SM5 - but patriotic consumers have apparently been staying away because it isn't French enough (Renault has sold under 3,800 examples this year).
Renault may yet provide an answer for its displaced countrymen in the form of a new Initiale Paris-branded flagship offering that would be developed on Mercedes-Benz E-Class britches, but it has not yet decided whether it will move forward with the car. The alternative, to follow Citroën and Peugeot in leaving the segment, is probably looking quite appealing now, especially with Europe's continued economic malaise.

PSA and Renault both hit by autoworker strikes

Peugeot-Citroën (PSA) and Renault were both the targets of autoworker strikes on Thursday, the result of ongoing tensions between labor and management in the wake of planned facility closings in 2014.
3,000 French jobs stand to be lost in less than two years when the PSA's Aulnay plant executes a planned closure of a production line. The line in question currently builds Citroën's C3 subcompact model.
Negotiations are reportedly still underway, with PSA pledging to offer jobs elsewhere to about half of the Aulnay workers that stand to be laid off.

Infiniti signs four-year deal to become title sponsor of Red Bull Racing

The chief of Infiniti's Formula One motorsport involvement, Andreas Sigl, said just last week that the brand was "going longer and deeper" into its collaboration with Red Bull, and the proof has already come: the Japanese luxury brand has signed a four-year deal to become the title sponsor of Red Bull Racing. From next year the team will be Infiniti Red Bull Racing.
The move cements Infiniti's intention to make the most of the already-ongoing technical collaboration it has had with Red Bull Racing for two years - this year Milton Keynes team has been testing Infiniti's Scratch Heal paint for aero properties and during the young driver test it used KERS batteries that were wholly developed by Infiniti's parent company, Nissan.
Earning a tip of the hat for not giving into cheap-trick branding, the engines will continue to be branded as Renault. Renault/Nissan CEO does not "want any confusion within the Alliance as to who does what."

Renault planning a Tata Nano rival. Again.

Four years ago, Renault confirmed that it would partner with India's Bajaj Auto to develop a rival to the Tata Nano. At the time, as everyone waited for the Tata Nano to arrive, you could have used a Richter scale to measure the tremors the executive suites of any automaker with an interest in the low end of emerging markets. Then the Nano, still the cheapest car in the world, didn't sell so well - at the end of last year its sales were just six percent of its most conservative projections - and everyone seemed content to let Tata spend the money to figure out if there really was a market for the cheapest car in the world.
Renault believes there is, kind of. Automotive News Europe reports that it will partner with Nissan to build two low-priced cars for emerging markets, one for €3,000 ($3,888 U.S.) and another for €5,000 ($6,400 U.S.). The price of the least expensive offering is nearly $1,400 more than a Nano, which costs $2,500, and that can't be considered a small sum in comparison. But one of the hindsight knocks on the Nano has been that even in emerging markets buyers don't want a car whose biggest lure is that it is cheap; they'd rather give their aspirations a bit more of a workout.
Renault's offerings are scheduled to hit the non-Western market in late 2014, which is coincidentally the same year that will see the return of the budget-minded and emerging-market-specific Datsun nameplate. They'll be built in Renault facilities in Chennai, India, with no mention made of Bajaj this time around.