While French workers take hostages, French companies do a little extortion: “PSA Peugeot Citroën has warned that its 2009 operating loss could reach €2bn if France does not renew its cash-for-bangers scheme, due to expire later this year,” the Financial Times reports. Without “cash-for-bangers,” as the Brits call their clunker culling program, Peugeot will scale down fourth-quarter production, anticipating an utterly awful 2010. Jobs will be lost, red ink will be all over the place. The FT rightly assumes that PSA’s “mutterings may be intended to press the French government to continue the plan.” Can the French possibly say non?
FT thinks that cash4clunkers will remain a European fixture: “In fact, France, Germany and others will almost certainly maintain such schemes into 2010—though Germany may trim its over-generous incentives. After all, they are having a powerful effect on spending and automotive employment.” German new car sales jumped an extraordinary 40 per cent year-on-year in May, and are up 22 per cent year-to-date. Germany’s new cars sales for 2009 are predicted to rise by around 20 percent to 3.6 million cars, only to plummet by 22 percent to 2.8 million units sold in 2010—if the Abwrackprmämie is discontinued. French car sales increased 12 percent in May, and are down only 1.4 percent this year. FT remarks that the “schemes’ net costs appear somewhat limited by increased value added tax receipts and reduced unemployment costs.”
So how long will it be before a black market for imported clunkers from Europe, Asia, and Africa shows up?
I will find it ironic that Europeans will end up having to buy back cars that were stolen from them in the first place and sold in the Middle East and Africa.
Decades ago when Car and Driver ran a similar image imploring it’s readers to subscribe they took a lot of heat – and rightly so.
So may I suggest that you not riff off of a bad buff book and select another image that better illustrates the point of your writing.
Thanks,
Decades ago when Car and Driver ran a similar image imploring its readers to subscribe they took a lot of heat
The image is actually designed to look like an infamous National Lampoon cover — “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” Whatever the Car & Driver cover looked like, it was presumably based on the same underlying source.
The French and the Japanese have always been big on forcing people to junk their old cars. Not a good idea.
Austin: Kindly send me a picture of a close relative, we’ll photochop it and will gladly exchange it.
Bluecon: I’m in China. Send PETA on over. They’ll have their hands full.