2014年经济学人 欧洲汽车制造商 豪车（在线收听）

Europe's carmakers

Polishing up

Cheap cars are not selling, so their makers are betting on expensive ones

It's shiny, but who will buy it?

AN ARMY of buffers attends to the cars at motor shows, continually polishing them to a level of otherworldly gleam. The sparkle they are putting on models from Europe's mass-market carmakers at the Paris show, which opened to the public on October 4th, is at odds with the lacklustre state of the automotive market. But it reflects growing, if misguided, optimism among the manufacturers that they can sell more cars for more money.

The carmakers' cheer is explained by a belief that the worst is over. Sales in Europe tumbled in the 2008 financial crisis, and have fallen every year since. Only 12.4m cars were sold in 2013, nearly 4m fewer than in 2007. But early this year a rebound began, and sales so far this year are up 6%.

Unfortunately, it already seems to be fading. Gloomier analysts predict that after an increase of just 2% for this year as a whole, there may be no growth in 2015. Even if the recovery is stronger, IHS, a research firm, expects that demand will remain well below pre-crisis levels in 2020.

This is grim for the firms which lean most heavily on Europe. PSA Peugeot-Citro?of France relies on the continent for almost three-quarters of revenues, though it hopes a recent tie-up with Dongfeng of China will boost sales there. Fiat's merger with Chrysler has provided insulation, but as with Ford and General Motors, Europe is still an open wound. All the mass-market firms lost money in the region last year, with the exception of VW. Its expensive Audi and Porsche brands keep its profits rolling in. And like BMW and Daimler, it has done well in China, whose rich regard fancy German cars a status symbol.

Other parts of the world that had helped keep some carmakers going have hit trouble. Recession in Brazil has been bad for Fiat and Renault. Ford's European factories are among those suffering as sales in the big and hitherto profitable Russian market are falling because of Western sanctions over Ukraine. Russian car sales may fall by a third this year, to 2m.

Even after six years of falling sales, carmakers have not done enough to cut their excess capacity in western Europe. Haroon Hassan of Mitsubishi UFJ, a bank, reckons that together, their assembly lines are turning out just 65% of the 21m cars a year they could make at full tilt. Analysts reckon they need to run at 70-80% just to break even.

GM and Ford have restructured the most, closing a couple of plants each. But governments and unions have prevented the scale of job cuts that might make a difference. PSA's closure of a car-assembly plant at Aulnay in 2013 was the first in France for 20 years. Workers at PSA and Renault have agreed to be more flexible, but only in return for a promise that no more factories will shut.

Instead of making more cuts, the mass-market carmakers are aspiring to boost their volumes and margins with new, premium-priced models. At the Paris show, PSA unveiled the latest designs for its upmarket DS range. Fiat wants its underused Italian plants to turn out Jeeps, Alfa Romeos and Maseratis. Ford's Vignale and Renault's Initiale Paris brands offer high-specification versions of lowlier cars.

They are pushing into a market that is already crowded. The upmarket German brands, and Jaguar Land Rover of Britain, have broadened their ranges to include more petite but pricey models. The big Japanese carmakers are relaunching their luxury marques. Moving upmarket is a long and expensive business for companies that do not have time or money to spare. And motorists do not value the mass-market companies' own brands enough to want to pay for more than basic models, no matter much polish is applied.