Renault To Dealers: Go Negative on Competition
Speaking of GM’s “May the Best Car Win,” Renault is telling its dealers exactly how to convince potential customers that competitors’ products suck. Our French-speaking friends are invited to offer translations of Cardesiac‘s article below. Mais moi? Non. For pure entertainment value (a TTAC hallmark j’espere) I prefer Yahoo’s babel fish. To wit: “And for this reason, nothing is worth tacler a little the competitors with some arguments felt well to underline their defects, to start with the most sharpened of them: Ford Focus RS. And Renault is not tender: design close to the universe of the tuning, completions to be perfected, alarming consumption and tax CO2 (weight), disappointing motricity (nose gear sometimes floating in acceleration, resources limited under 2.000 tr/min,…), imperfect guidance of box, diameter of too large steering (12,2 m), height adjustment of the seats before tiresome, not of more radical choice of suspensions in option and little choice of personalization.” Tacler? The mind boggles. Anyway, Renault misunderstands a sales basic: a new product’s greatest competitor is the customer’s existing product. The easiest thing for a car owner to do is to keep doing what they’re already doing. Instructions on how to tell buyers thir current car is crap; now that I’d like to see.
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comical in a inspector clouseau manner the problem is the Ford Focus RS is one of those cars that are beyond reproach... it hasn't had anything but rapturous applause... it's a car everyone lusts after... on both sides of the atlantic... it is lightning in a bottle for renault to criticise such a car is ridiculous give renault largely make pure 'merde'
Well, the Renaultsport Megane R26 and R26R are far from merde and manage to compete very successfully with the Focus ST and RS (the R26R being faster around the Ring than the 70hp stronger RS). The Renaultsport Clio equally stands as the best small hot hatch there currently is. But I find the sentiments very interesting - 20, even 30 years since the last experience with a company's product and still the same opinion ;) No wonder people are still buying MBs :D It might actually have been the most sensible strategy for GM to drive Caddy into the ground the way they did - they were selling so many more of the so much cheaper to engineer cars for sufficiently long to get, NPV corrected the most out of the brand (this is speculative but looks to be eminently feasible). On the other hand reestablishing the brand works best if it is a relatively cheap brand. Cheap brand often means younger people, a lesser delay between quality improvement and perceived improvement in quality perception and faster subsequent uptake of the new, better products of a brand. See Skoda or Hyundai / Kia as successful examples of this paradigm. Renault similarly made some wise choices over the last 10 years. Their investment in safety will probably pay off - it gives them bragging rights to have the safest car range of any manufacturer in Europe (according to Euro NCAP). They changed strategy recently towards much better quality, are getting out of the fleet business, have invested sufficiently to produce very competitive diesels (key in Europe), and have got the lower end of the enthusiast market covered like noone else in Europe. They are also about to get out of the large car segments, which have not been profitable for them for a while. Finally, the large push for electric propulsion will give them bragging rights, similar to those of Toyota on the HSD. Even if the cars themselves are no big sues immediately, they will change the perception of Renault in the markets that matter to them significantly, which will help all their products down the line.
They are especially proving themselves in reliability. Top Gear Survey
If Renault didn't make cars then who would occupy the bottoms of surveys?