It is, I suppose, hardly surprising that the market for new cars in Europe is in poor shape. With Germany having to support failing economies in southern Europe to a lesser or greater extent, and with 25% unemployment in Spain and so on, the purchase of a new car is not likely to be top of the list for many people.
Late last month there was a report by the BBC about the prevailing gloom amongst the motor-manufacturers that included this splendid statement from Sergio Marchionne, FIAT's boss:
Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat Auto agrees. "The European car market is a disaster," he says.
"It has plunged off a precipice that doesn't seem to have bottomed out yet. The prospects are anything but rosy,"
There was once some correspondence in The Times about mixed metaphors that included a superb example where a professor accused another of "Propping up the scaffolding of a collapsing hypothesis with a red herring." Marchonne's statement runs this one quite close I think.
Until the next time
