Europe's auto makers to introduce new features

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Europe's auto makers to introduce new features

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Europe's top auto executives boasted about the new features of their latest models.

15 May,2012 07:16 pm

Under the lights of the Geneva motor show in March, Europes top auto executives boasted about the new features of their latest models and tried to out-hype their rivals.The next morning, in a hotel conference room just across the way from Genevas convention centre, the same executives all sat down to work out how to fix their huge overcapacity problem.At a board meeting of the European automakers lobby group ACEA, the bosses of Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW, Peugeot, Renault, Fiat and Opel decided it was time to discuss the elephant in the room: plant closures.Their fear was of an all-out price war, said a source who was briefed about the meeting but declined to be named. The negative fallout from that would be terrible. The hard truth is that after more than four years of falling demand and profits, Europes carmakers have yet to restructure or consolidate. Many factories are running at partial capacity-analysts estimate automakers have cut some 3 million cars, or 20 percent, from their production lines - and still producers struggle to sell their wares.At the Geneva meeting, ACEA President Sergio Marchionne pressed members to call on Brussels for political cover to start shutting down factories.