Many carmakers opt out but Frankfurt Motor Show continues to thrill

Many carmakers opt out, but Frankfurt Motor Show continues to thrill

Mark Carbery

Traditionally the Frankfurt IAA has been a show of strength for the European auto industry, and especially the German car brands. Mercedes-Benz and BMW even have vast, ostentatious halls of their own to trumpet their credentials. But this year the IAA was a critical health-check for the industry, right in its European manufacturing and technological heartland.

The 63rd event, which opened its doors to the media on 14 September, was a scaled-down version of the show, which alternates with the Salon de l’Automobile in Paris and was last held in 2007. A lot can happen in two years, but no-one predicted just how much. And the fact that in that period what was once the world’s largest company of any sort, GM, passed into bankruptcy — that is only the tip of the iceberg that finally breached the hull of this lumbering industry.

Western European car registrations have fallen 11 percent in the first half of 2009 alone, despite Government incentives in Germany and the UK. Toyota said that it does not foresee demand increasing until mid-2010, and the German automotive body VDA added that it may take until 2014 for the market to recover to pre-2008 levels. Giant German parts maker Bosch was only slightly more optimistic, citing 2012.
As a result, stands were somewhat less lavish than usual. Some manufacturers, including Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, were absent altogether, which would have been unthinkable previously. Cars were cancelled. Public attendance was expected to be around 25 percent down. But with 700 exhibitors, 100 launches, 11 halls offering 170,000 sq metres of floor space, 135,000 media attending and over 70 press conferences, the show still offered a vibrant backdrop to the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, with which the first press day coincided. 

In fact, anyone new to the auto industry would have been hard pushed to detect much negativity. And seasoned show-goers would have been struck by the fact that, no matter how deep the problems facing the industry, some things apparently never change: pretty girls, wearing very little, garnished Fiat’s rather prosaic and practical offerings, and a wave of exotic, very expensive new products from Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Mercedes and McLaren rolled in somewhat incongruously on the tide of economic depression.
Centre of Attraction
This is what big international motor shows are good at. But it was Opel, not one of the prestige carmakers, that was at the centre of Frankfurt and an industry struggling to find a sustainable future. GM Europe’s core brand (and sister UK brand Vauxhall) — which seems finally to be heading for new ownership under Canadian parts maker Magna and Russian partner Sberbank — officially launched its key Astra model, which in this generation is an impressively swoopy yet muscular looking design for high-volume compact. A rival to the ubiquitous VW Golf, it will be cheaper as well as infinitely better looking.

More significantly, the company also officially launched the plug-in version of its range-extender Ampera hybrid at Frankfurt. The Ampera goes on sale as the Chevrolet Volt in the USA in 2010, hitting European roads a year or so later. The car is significant because it moves the hybrid/EV game on another step and will be built in high volumes. But virtually every major manufacturer had some sort of EV on its stand, and this time, unlike two years ago, the vast majority were actually running prototypes or actually scheduled for production.

Of the hybrids, Mercedes, BMW, Volvo