PSA Withdraws From Le Mans, Claims It's The Money

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

When a car company removes itself from Racing, it usually has one of two reasons:

  1. The company was luckless on the racecourse and just can’t stomach paying for losing.
  2. The company is in dire straits financially, and spending money for frivolous ventures such as car racing just doesn’t look right.

For France’s Peugeot, it’s both.

According to Reuters, PSA Peugeot Citroen will withdraw from Le Mans endurance racing. They say it’s the money. “This decision has been taken in the context of a difficult economic environment in Europe,” a company statement says. Reuters explains:

“Europe’s second-biggest car maker is struggling to rein in costs and revive flagging sales after a series of profit warnings. In October, Chief Executive Philippe Varin announced plans to save an additional 800 million euros ($1.03 billion) this year, including some 6,000 job cuts.”

As we saw yesterday, PSA lost a full point of market share in Europe last year, sales were down 8 percent. That while #1 rival Volkswagen took two points of market share and expanded its EU sales by 7.5 percent.

But then, there is that other reason, again the words of Reuters:

“Peugeot last claimed victory in the 89-year-old Le Mans 24 Hours contest in 2009, before losing to Volkswagen’s Audi team in the following two seasons.”

Now THAT is intolerable. Losing market share to le boche is one thing. But losing market share AND Le Mans is impardonnable!

Let’s say it’s for financial reasons and blame the difficult economic environment in Europe, oui?


Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Sector 5 Sector 5 on Jan 18, 2012

    PSA may feel they get better exposure through less traditional medium.

  • Dougjp Dougjp on Jan 19, 2012

    Bertel, I question the logic of your definition of "luckless on the racecourse". Because these are the FACTS about Peugeot, and it would be a shame if the readers here who are less aware of racing didn't know it: - 14 victories in the last 16 races - ILMC series championship winners two years running, 2010 and 2011 A further "truth about cars" disclosure - Peugeot doesn't sell cars where I live and I like both Audi and Peugeot in endurance/ALMS racing.

  • Tjh8402 Tjh8402 on Jan 19, 2012

    I also have to disagree with your conclusions Bertel. First, for the reasons's articulated above by doubjp. Yes, they have had only limited success at the 24 hours of Le Mans itself, but both version of the 908 have be strong, if not dominant over the Audi R10/15/18 competition in just about every other race, so there has been no shortage of on track success. Secondly, I question whether the $ being spent is the issue. Yes, the program is expensive, but much of the heavy lifting was already done. The car is well developed, and most of the testing and work for this year was completed. The race crew is not being let go, simply reassigned to other tasks in the company, so the labor savings are minimal. Even then, if the travel expenses were the issue, they need not have run the whole championship. Toyota is only competing in select races this year, and Audi and Peugeot have done the same in the past. They could have done Sebring (pre Le Mans test) the European home soil biggies (Le Mans and Silverstone) and maybe China (not sure how big PSA's presence is there). I seriously doubt the ACO would have refused a Le Mans invite to the home team just because they withdrew from the full championship. My guess is that this was more about PR and the flack the PSA board (they were the ones who put the kabosh on it) was worried about getting in the media (and perhaps from shareholders) in France over spending this amount of $ on the race program while laying off large numbers of workers back home. It was obviously a fast, spur of the moment decision, as the team had literally just set up in the paddock at Sebring to start testing, having already undertaken the effort to ship the whole shebang across the Atlantic, and was making decisions about what their campaign for the coming year would look like (like possibly debuting a hybrid of their own). http://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/the-consequences-of-peugeots-withdrawal-from-endurance-racing?artid=139751&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=racing

  • Morea Morea on Jan 19, 2012

    Actually, you could argue that Peugeot has had great success at Le Mans: in 2009 they broke Audi's string of 9 outright victories from 2000 to 2008.* Not even the once mighty Porsche tried to break the Audi stranglehold (and now being part of VAG probably will never try, rumors to the contrary). I would add that Peugeot was carrying the flag not just for PSA but for the entire French nation against the Germans and all other nationalities. Don't underestimate the importance to the French people of winning the most important auto race held on French soil. * 2003 was won by Bentley (a subsidiary of VAG) using a Bentley chassis but an Audi engine.

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