As Paris Motor Show Is Packed Up, a Hunt for Silver Linings

Yoan Valat/European Pressphoto Agency French riot police standing guard at the entrance to the Paris motor show on Oct. 9. Police clashed with demonstrators later in the day.

PARIS - The 2012 Paris motor show has ended, and the final tallies have come in. From a quantitative standpoint the show was scored a success, but from a qualitative view it was, in the grand Parisian tradition, something of a masquerade ball.

There were more than 100 world premieres, a record number according to organizers. More than 12,000 people received press credentials for the previews on Sept. 27 to 28, and attendanc e for the public days, which ran from Sept. 29 to Sunday, eclipsed 1.2 million, on par with the 2010 edition of the show. “It remains the show with the highest attendance worldwide,” Catherine Stucki, the show's communications director, said in a news release this week.

But behind those gaudy numbers lurked some caveats. Press attendance was down by about 1,000 from reported levels in 2010. (The Paris show alternates every other year on the international calendar with the Frankfurt motor show.) The definition of what constituted a world premiere was rather loosely applied. And the attendance figures were achieved “despite demonstrations” by assorted environmental groups and disgruntled union workers who aimed protests at the show, Ms. Stucki said.

Among the billed debutantes at the show were predictable makeovers, tepid facelifts and minor variations on existing models. Mildly revised concepts previously shown at other salons - the Citroën Tubik comes to mind - could be fairly viewed as old pigs with new lipstick.

Even among the two dozen or so significant introductions here there were few genuine surprises. Nearly all the key Paris products had been celebrated elsewhere: the Volkswagen Golf at an event in Berlin; the Range Rover at corporate events in Britain and North America; and the Jaguar F-Type at an off-site soirée at the Rodin Museum in Paris the night before the first day of press previews.

Three Greenpeace activists were arrested on Sept. 27 after they broke into the grounds and concealed a protest banner in the ceiling above the Volkswagen display. The banner unfurled during VW's introduction of the Golf, which was attended by the usual loud music, bright lights and fog, and said “Volkswagen: Nous Enfume,” the French for “We smoke.” The phrase was a reference, the Greenpeace spokesman, Sébastien Blavier, said later, to VW's efforts to throttle back tough new emissions standards in the European Union. Many in attendance, including some VW executives, wondered if the banner's rather ambiguous message was part of the unveiling.

On Oct. 9, a union demonstration outside the Paris Expo convention center during the show's entire run turned violent. An estimated 1,000 workers, many of them from among the 8,000 expected to lose their jobs at a PSA Peugeot Citroën plant scheduled for closure, broke through the gates. Riot police countered with tear gas. Several dozen arrests were made, police said.

Through it all, automakers inside the Expo continued to wear a happy face, even as many of them reported dropping sales and profits. Ford, which showed its new Mondeo midsize model here, confirmed it was bracing for losses of more than $1 billion on its European operations in 2012. Many automakers predicted they would, to save costs and streamline operations, have to cancel or pull back many planned models, even as they were un veiling new ones here.

Tensions flared between VW Group and Fiat over perceived foul play in the ruinous price war among European volume brands. Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat chief executive, not so delicately invited Martin Winterkorn, the VW chief, to an early morning meeting at the Fiat stand. The moment was defused with a handshake between the two men, but the point was made: Even the glittering façade of a popular motor show cannot hide the bleak economic realities of the European auto industry.

It was reported in the show's final days that General Motors might try to divest its cash-hemorrhaging Opel division by having it merge with PSA Peugeot Citroën into something of a zombie car conglomerate. None of those brands are doing well, so auto industry analysts strained to see what synergies might be created in such a merger. G.M. has a small stake in the PSA alliance, ostensibly to cooperate on development of new models, although little in the way of co-devel opment has been discussed publicly by the brands.

The French auto industry has contracted since its halcyon days when Renault, Citroën and Peugeot vied for buyers in the critical United States market. As such, the Paris show seems to have more international relevance than its host country's own automotive sector.

Organizers have devised ways to use the sprawling convention center's open spaces, including installing an electric vehicle test track. More than 8,000 tests were carried out, Ms. Stucki said in her statement, “twice as many as 2010.” That said, the actual amount of square footage devoted to manufacturer displays and stands shrank somewhat since 2008.

The E.V. industry is experiencing stiff headwinds in sales acceptance for existing halo models, like the Nissan Leaf. This point was punctuated on Tuesday, two days after the show closed, when the battery maker A123 Systems filed for bankruptcy protection.

Ms. Stucki put a brave face on the proceedings. “The 2012 Paris Motor Show was indeed the quality show to gear up for recovery,” she said.