FEBRUARY 19, 2007

Why Renault left the GPMA?

Last week produced a bit of a mystery over why Renault decided to quit the GPMA rather than letting the now-redundant organisation fade away gracefully.

One explanation which has been suggested is that Renault, FIAT, Peugeot, Volskwagen and most of the other big European car makers have all been distancing themselves from BMW and Mercedes in recent weeks over the attitude of the two firms to EU proposals to mandate caps of

carbon dioxide emissions to 120g/kM. BMW and Mercedes make high emission high performance heavy up-market vehicles and so want the cap to be an average over the entire industry so they can continue to exceed the average with their own products. Renault, FIAT, Peugeot and VW tend to make low emission budget vehicles would end up subsidizing the carbon dioxide emissions of the larger cars and want the cap averaged over each maker so they will benefit.

The row has already made political headlines with the German government supporting BMW and DaimlerChrysler and so Renault may have felt that a very loud gesture was called for in return.