In the grand old days of the European auto industry, rival houses would battle for supremacy in endurance, road, rally and formula racing, the results of which were treated as far more important than (or, at least the basis for) such prosaic concerns as sales volume or profitability. In the modern era, this fierce competition slacked, as racing became about brand-building and competition moved into the arenas of sales and profits.  Now, however, a new competition has erupted between every brand with a presence in the European market, only this time participation is compulsory and the stakes are survival in a super-competitive, mature market. And neither speed nor endurance will win this race against time: only reaching an EU-mandated carbon emissions goal by 2015 will do.

The chart at the top of this post, from a JATO Dynamics study [PDF here], shows the race by manufacturer group. The overall fleet average target for 2015 is 130g/km, a march that Toyota has already achieved. However, each manufacturer also has a separate target for 2015, calculated in proportion to the average curb weight of its cars. As a result, each automaker is still shy of their 2015 target, but Toyota is still the closest, needing just a 4.2% improvement to achieve its target. Daimler, meanwhile, has four years to improve its average emissions by nearly 20 percent (despite being one of the only manufacturers with a target significantly above 130g/km).

For another look at the race to clean up emissions, here is a chart of average C02 output by brand. If nothing else, it shows the impact of luxury and sportscar brands on manufacturing groups, as (for example) the Fiat brand has an average emission of 123.1 g/km, but Fiat Group (which includes small volumes of high-carbon-average Maserati and Ferrari sales) emits 125.9 g/100km. And the Fiat Group case is very nearly best-case, as Autocar reports that Ferrari topped the sportscar brand carbon emission reductions from 2009-2010, shedding an average of 46 g/km to 326 g/km, thanks to a 46% volume mix of relatively low-emissions Ferrari Californias. Ferrari also has small-car specialist Fiat to average out its emissions, a luxury that (among major European sportscar brands) only Aston Martin can not rely on.

Aston shaved only 2 g/km off of its average emissions, from 359 g/km to 357 g/km, between 2009 and 2010. More importantly, because it is an independent firm with no mass-volume brand to help its average, Aston has to take radical action to make its target. You might know that “radical action” as the Aston Martin Cygnet, possibly the most reviled car in auto enthusiasm-dom. It ain’t pretty, but dammit, it emits only 99 g/km. Whereas previous eras of European automaker competition created cars like the 250 GTO and Jaguar D-Type, the Great European Carbon Race has yielded a rebadged Toyota. Ain’t the modern world grand?