MOTOR
Fiat touts Italian style in China car challenge
Italian car maker Fiat is returning to China five years after a
failed joint venture, but now faces entrenched competition and slowing
growth in the world's biggest auto market.
Fiat, the world's seventh largest car maker after taking a majority
stake in Chrysler when the troubled US firm emerged from bankruptcy in
2009, has been conspicuous by its absence from the critical Chinese
market.
But the first sales of its new Viaggio, a compact produced at a $790
million joint venture plant in Changsha city, come as China's economy
stumbles and cities slap limits on vehicles over pollution and
congestion.
Fiat-Chrysler's very presence in China also set off a political storm
in the recent US presidential election, after Republican candidate Mitt
Romney ran an attack ad implying that it would export American jobs.
But the company says future plans to build Jeep brand sport utility
vehicles in China are an expansion, not a transfer of operations.
In the first 10 months of this year, China's passenger car sales rose
6.9 percent from a year earlier, to 12.57 million vehicles.
The increase was a far cry from the 33 percent rise in the whole of
2010, although slightly up on last year. Consultancy McKinsey on
Wednesday forecast average growth of eight percent a year until 2020 --
down from a 24 percent average over 2005-2011.
AFP |