Plain sailing ahead? Nope

The crisis in car manufacturing is obviously over. The list of new production models and/or concepts that will be on display at next week’s Geneva Motor Show is as long as I can ever remember. And that’s just counting the mainstream brands which subscribe to the popular automotive media services; there will scores of other smaller firms who will have as-yet-unrevealed hardware in Palexpo’s show halls. And yet the crisis clearly isn’t over at all. Geneva is the glossy sticking plaster, set to music with flashing lights and dancing girls. UK new car registrations stood at 1.94 million in 2011, down close to five per cent on the year before. There’s still huge over-capacity in vehicle production and at some point factories are going have to close. Some will be in the UK. GM, which has operations at Ellesmere Port and Luton, has already hinted at this. Yesterday it announced it was forming a global alliance with PSA Peugeot Citroen to help both become more profitable. It used to have a similar arrangement with Fiat but that’s didn’t work out. There will be more bad news for the global car industry, but it won’t be next week in Geneva.