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France's Renault Takes a Detour
Jean Radzynski, a 73-year-old retired engineer, looks over a Renault Logan he planned to buy to keep at his vacation home on France's southern coast.
(By Molly Moore -- The Washington Post)
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"There's a reason Renault is getting a lot of attention with this car," said Adam Jonas, a European automotive analyst at Morgan Stanley in London. "They're the only one doing this so aggressively. If they are successful, there will be followers."
While other companies have produced low-cost vehicles often called "world cars" for sales in emerging market countries, Jonas said the Logan is the first major project of its type in nearly a decade. He said other such ventures have failed, largely because it is difficult to recoup costs when the typical customer doesn't go for a lot of expensive upgrades, the gravy that brings profits. Most basic cars in emerging market countries sell with virtually no added frills.
The Logan currently is produced in Romania, Russia, Morocco and Colombia. The chunky car seats five people comfortably and has voluminous trunk space.
Detourbet's team of 40 to 50 designers, engineers and other specialists designed the car on computers, cutting costs by using parts -- door handles, knobs, the gearbox -- from older Renault models, installing a simple dashboard devoid of the gizmos that have become standard in most cars and eliminating most high-tech electronics.
"The only driving force for the concept of the car was cost," said Detourbet, a former mathematics professor who has spent three decades at Renault. "We worked 1 1/2 years in one room, one place, with one objective."
They did not build a prototype, instead putting the car into production directly from its computer-generated designs. Even the car's name was created by a computer. "We wanted a good word with no problems in any language," Detourbet said.
Low labor and production costs in the countries where the car is manufactured also contribute to the low base price.
Detourbet's goal is to sell 1 million Logans a year, primarily in developing nations. But he also revels in the unexpected demand for the modest car in the oversold West European marketplace. He respects customers like 55-year-old Jean Pierre Hug of Paris.
Hug recently gave up his Peugeot 309 and bought a dark-green Logan for just under $11,000, including extras such as a radio-cassette player and side airbags.
"The price was really the determining factor in choosing the Logan," said Hug, who uses the car for shopping in the city as well as drives into the countryside. "But she's also sweet to drive."
