Ford “helps” Dacia keep Romania's car production at 300,000 units

The start of Ford car manufacturing at a steady pace this year could contribute a few tens of thousands of the cars manufactured on the Romanian market, helping keep local car production at almost 300,000 units, whilst Automobile Dacia is preparing for a decline in demand.

Last year demand for Logan and Sandero models prompted Dacia to raise the production rate to 1,340 automobiles/day, which resulted in a rise in Romanian car production by 20.9%, to more than 296,000 units. In the last few months of the year Ford only produced 300 Transit Connect vehicles.

Dacia representatives said, however, that demand for 2010 is not guaranteed, after the schemes meant to boost car markets will be either discontinued (in Germany) or will have lower funds available (in France).

"I cannot give any figures for the time being as to the volume of exports to Western Europe. The uncertainty of these markets leads us to expect a sales decline. As far as Romania is concerned, we intend to preserve our turnover," said Fabrice Cambolive, commercial manager of Automobile Dacia.

2009 was the best commercial year in Dacia's history, with its top export markets being Germany (almost 85,000 units), France (65,956 units), and Italy (almost 22,000 units) but Germany will no longer run a scrappage scheme in 2010, while France has already cut the scrappage bonus from 1,000 euros to 700 euros, and will further cut it to 500 euros in the second half of the year.

Ford originally expected to sell around 30,000 vehicles in 2010, mainly utility vehicles, but the figures could be exceeded, because of the B-max model being produced in Craiova starting in the second half of this year, and of the 250,000-unit production target announced for 2011.