Any mention of a ‘five-year plan’ – or any ‘insert amount of number of years here plan’ – makes me come over all uneasy.
Why? Just ask Dany Bahar. But why cock up in five years what you can do in four, as anyone who’s watched the excellent football documentary on QPR will testify. And while we’re on that subject, how about a nine-year plan for England to win the World Cup? Bahar could oversee that one, perhaps.
But that’s another story. Tonight I was ready to sharpen the knives after Renault UK’s managing director Ken Ramirez let slip that the firm has implemented a holistic five-year plan due to come to fruition by 2017. So I, with my cynical hat on, was expecting a new model blitz with new sports cars, plans to quadruple sales etc to be at the heart of this plan.
Ramirez’s plan though is a different one. It’s modest, it’s realistic and you really believe it could happen. Ramirez is not mentioning any real nitty-gritty specifics, but stated that the ultimate goal was to lift the company’s market share from the 2.4 per cent it accrued last year, back above five per cent in 2017.
Now remember this is Renault, a firm that took the bold decision to take some medicine at the end of 2011 and axe a whole host of underperforming models from its UK line-up such as the Laguna, Espace, Modus and Wind (remember that one?). Any car maker that takes such a bold step is one which really can look at things objectively, and not feel it has to do something just because it has always done it.
Ramirez admits that Renaults had become a commodity to buyers, bought by buyers from dealers just because it was a Renault and they had always bought them from there.
Now, in a very heartening approach, it’s only interested in products that you want to physically buy and pay decent money for, not because you can get a whopping great discount. The new Renault Clio is at the heart of this, followed by the Renault Captur and a new C-segment crossover in 2015.
These models are key as the Clio sits in the UK’s largest segment, and the other pair are in the fastest-growing segments; there’s no weird or quirky niches Renault is trying to create, or dying segments like the Laguna’s that Renault UK is wanting to target.
So far, so good it seems. Renault’s market share will end the year above three per cent, but remember this includes Dacia for the first time, a firm on course to sell 18,000 units in the UK of Renault’s 70,000-plus overall.
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Sales of Dacia might be on
Sales of Dacia might be on the up, and rightly so, but Renault make far more profit (i assume) from the Renault Sport models, and yet they are taking a huge risk going auto only. If they only end up selling cheap cars with tiny margins surely they are sunk?
I have seen a transported full of Zoe, but not one on the road. I have never seen a Fluence, and the only Twizy i have seen belongs to the local Renault dealer.
I really want Renault to do well, but they seem determined to take huge risks. I dont think things look good for them at all.
In what way is this a modest plan?
I wouldn't call any plan which aims to more than double Renault's market share within 4 years modest. Especially given the colossal investment the company has made in developing electric cars of which there is no mention.
Renault's only recent success of note has been the growth of the Dacia brand, but how many of this company's sales are conquests given that many (most) Renault and Dacia dealerships share the same premises?
Let's hope that I am wrong.