AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE AUTOMAKERS Catastrophic failures Daimler, Renault, VW and Fiat cars on list of European industry’s money-losers PAUL MCVEIGH them severe financial difficulties. Others, ing of Europe’s biggest money-losers.
[email protected] such as the Bugatti Veyron, Smart ForTwo He did so by looking at the cars’ pro- utomakers from Fiat to Volkswagen and Volkswagen Phaeton, swallowed duction runs, estimated fixed-cost in- Aand Daimler to Renault lost a com- huge sums of money. “The multi-billion vestments and r&d costs. Warburton bined 20 billion euros developing and losses that we believe were suffered by and his team then estimated the likely price realization and contribution mar- selling models ranked in a top 10 list of the Fiat Stilo, Peugeot 1007 and Jaguar gin per car, as well as estimated fixed- the European auto industry’s most “cat- X-Type were severe trauma for the com- asset write-downs. astrophic” failures of the past 15 years. panies concerned – and in some cases Some of the cars that flopped, such as nearly sank them,” Bernstein Research Over the next four pages is the top 10, the Fiat Stilo, Peugeot 1007 and Jaguar said in a report. Max Warburton is the ranked by estimated total losses during X-Type, caused the companies that built financial analyst who created the rank- each car’s life cycle. High specs led to huge ForTwo losses The first-generation Smart ForTwo had achieved its planned annual volume of specifications normally seen on super- 200,000 units. The first-generation cars.