PSA Hopes Opel's Sale Will Unsettle Customers

The sale of Opel to Canadian - Austrian partsmaker Magna International will surely have an impact on the auto sector and PSA hopes this will unsettle customers and bring more buyers for its models. PSA Peugeot Citron, currently the second largest carmaker in Europe, wants to increase its sales in Germany following the Opel - Magna deal so it has already set up several plans to help it achieve this goal.

First of all, it will debut the Peugeot 5008 in Germany first, so the model will compete with Opel Zafira, Bloomberg reported citing Executive Vice President Jean-Marc Gales. Following high sales through government-backed incentive schemes, PSA expects to continue its growth in 2010 by adding German fleet dealerships.

"It gets harder for a carmaker when their clients don't know where they'll have to go for spare parts," Gales said according to the source.

PSA Peugeot Citroen is one of the companies that agreed with the sale of Opel from the very beginning, mentioning that even if the German company is acquired by Fiat - the Italian manufacturer was one of the interested suitors - the alliance doesn't represent a threat to its own operations.

"We do not fear a possible alliance between Fiat and Opel. The car world is certainly not in its first phase of consolidation, we have always been working in a competitive scenario," Jean-Philippe Collin, head of the Peugeot brand, said back in May when negotiations for the Opel sale were in the early stages.

"In periods like this, of scarce liquidity, the best thing is to concentrate resources on few and selected activities: renewing products, strengthening the network and satisfying clients."