Peugeot gets serious about 'growth' markets

November 23, 2012: The French carmaker will reveal its new 301, a car built especially for what it calls 'growth markets' in Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. Eventually it will also be sold and manufactured in China. According to Peugeot's new 38- year-old brand CEO, Maxime Picat, who until recently was chief of PSA's Chinese operations, Peugeot wants to use this specially targeted "value" model, and others like it, to boost non-European sales proportion to 60 percent by 2020.

The Peugeot 301 is a restyled and stretched four-door 308 with a separate, booted shape of its own. It will be built initially in Vigo, Spain. It sits on a stretched 308 wheelbase and wider tracks, is 4.4 metres long and features both the generous rear cabin and capacious separate boot that owners in these markets prefer.

There are three engines, a 72bhp non-turbo version of the recently-launched 1.2-litre PSA triple, plus a 115bhp 1.6 petrol four and a 92bhp normally aspirated version of the familiar 1.6 HDi diesel, which is, Peugeot says is the world's biggest-selling diesel engine. PSA has been criticised in France and elsewhere for not being sufficiently "internationalised" but spokesmen say the group is working hard to change things. Two years ago, group volume outside Europe was just 30 percent, last year it was 42 percent and by 2015 it is tipped to reach 50 percent, en route to the 60 percent target by 2020.

Peugeot had announced plans for a 170,000-unit facility in Gujarat in 2011 at Sanand where Tata Motors and, more recently, Ford India will set up its second India plant. With Peugeot facing a slowing European market, the project is in the process of being re-evaluated. GM and Peugeot struck up an alliance in the early part of 2012 and it was clear that that alliance would not be extended to India where GM India has its own plans to launch a couple of Chinese-designed vehicles.

STEVE CROPLEY/AUTOCAR UK

(India inputs from Brian de Souza)