The Geneva Motor Show - A Motor Show of transition

February 23, 2004 By Vincent Hutter

CLICK4 74th Geneva Motor Show

After crisis, there is recovery - and after the 74th Motor Show, the 75th! While manufacturers are drawing a line under their difficult year in 2003 and expressing their confidence in a brighter future by flooding Geneva Palexpo with novelties, the Geneva Motor Show itself is preparing for a double celebration in a year's time: its centenary and the 75th anniversary of the international show. All of a sudden, the 74th global meeting place for the automobile in Geneva seems doubly like a transitional Motor Show, the beginning of better times and the prelude to a celebration.

In 2002, the year after 9/11, the car market, like the whole economy, experienced the shock waves. In Switzerland, for example, it declined by 6.9%.

2003 was the year of the Iraq war. The worries and uncertainties it caused once again affected consumption. And this time more strongly, most notably in the automobile industry, which put the brakes on sharply in most countries. In Switzerland there was a drop of 8%, i.e. 271,541 new cars registered, compared with 295,109 the previous year.

But not all manufacturers were affected in the same way, for various reasons: the variety and wealth of their markets, their capitalization and therefore their ability to invest in R&D, the depth and breadth of their range, the quality of their alliances, the flexibility of their production or even their ability to renew their models. Globally, even if General Motors remains the world number one with almost 15% of the overall market, it is the Japanese who are making the most of things. The Toyota group, in particular, with its subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino (lorries), produced 6,826 million cars last year and thus captured 11% of the world market, suddenly leaping into second place in front of Ford, which had held this position for more than 70 years. Honda and Nissan also recorded production increases last year.

As far as European manufacturers are concerned, the French - Renault and the PSA Peugeot-Citro‘n group - are faring better globally than the Italians and most of the Germans.

Switzerland, a test market because it has no manufacturers of its own, of course mirrors these wider trends. Apart from Porsche, all the German and Italian manufacturers saw their sales drop, by between 11% and about 18%, depending on the marque. As for the French, if Renault and Peugeot also struggled a bit, Citro‘n, by contrast, accomplished a remarkable leap forward (+23.6%), thanks notably to its particularly aggressive business strategy. In the Japanese camp, there were the winners and the less successful. Daihatsu, Mazda, Subaru and Honda are classed among the former, while the others lost ground. But Japanese manufacturers as a whole have come out of it rather well because they have even managed to slightly increase their market share (+ 0.7%), as have their Korean neighbours and competitors (+ 1.2%), with an extraordinary performance from Kia (+ 63.8%)! The same cannot be said of the Americans or the British, who are losing momentum.

But all the experts agree in predicting the return to growth, starting this year. You just need to wander down the aisles of Geneva Palexpo to discover the wealth of novelties unveiled at this 74th international Motor Show to be convinced: confidence has returned and manufacturers and importers alike are once again experiencing the stirring of a certain optimism.

So it is under an altogether bluer economic sky that everyone will meet at Geneva again next year, for a jubilee Motor Show, which will be a great national and international celebration of the car.

But in the meantime, as an indicator of the splendour of the festivities to come, the 2004 vintage of the Geneva International Motor Show is superb. So go ahead and enjoy it without reservation!