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Fancy a low-cost car?
Things are not going well in the automobile market. Sales have been dropping and even the “untouchable” luxury car sector has suffered collateral damage as a result of the crisis. Other variables, like the almost daily rise in the price of fuel (like when a barrel of crude reached 147 dollars per barrel in 2008) have also done nothing to help.
Bruno Filipe Pires, Edition 614 (18 Feb 2010), 
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Thus, the search for the essential (something basic and useful) has grown in these troubled times – with consumers pondering their choices for reducing expenditure.
In this context, the first 2010 market-research study by watchdog «Cetelem» - which recently reached our offices – set out to see if the «low-cost» mentality (commercial strategy which involves offering a simplified item or service for a lower price) could be the answer for the ailing auto-market of Europe.
The conclusions are surprising. Contrary to what one sees on the roads and streets of Portugal – where, traditionally, the car is exhibited as a status symbol – mentalities would appear to be changing. And it’s a tendency all over Europe: 29 per cent of Europeans involved in the study already entertain the possibility of acquiring a low-cost car. Portugal, the UK and Spain are among the most enthusiastic.
Here, a number of low-cost models arrived on the market in 2008. The automobile sector registered a slump (-25 per cent, in 2009) in Portugal, but even so Dacia – the Romanian manufacturer bought out in 1999 by France’s Renault – sold 442 cars in 2008, and 584 in 2009. That’s a sales increase of 32 per cent!
Europe-wide, sales of Dacia vehicles have gone from just 2.080 in 2004 to 84.290 in 2008… On average, according to the «Cetelem» study, one in every two Europeans questioned said they’d be prepared to buy a car made in China, even India.
In a land as badly planned as Portugal, anyone who doesn’t have a car runs the risk of never getting anywhere. Even so, 87 per cent of the Portuguese spoken to in this study considered the car to be “another (expense-related) effort”. On average in the 27 member-states, 21 per cent of Europeans purchase a car for pleasure only.
In short, the days of showing-off one’s car are coming to an end – particularly as nearly all such cars are approaching their sell-by dates due to the advent of new technologies.
Meantime, Mitsubishi has announced the national delivery date for the first 400 i-MiEV models – the world’s first electric car to go into mass-production. They’ll be arriving in Portugal during the 2nd quarter of 2010. If you recall, last spring, more than 200 tests went ahead on this little car in Portugal. Journalists, organisations, businessmen and private individuals gave the i-MiEV a resounding thumbs-up as a realistic alternative to the traditional urban vehicle…
