Matt Prior

"It sounds like more red tape on top of existing red tape"

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I'm containing my enthusiasm about the idea of a new small car class that's meant to save Europe's automotive industry.

European car makers have been lobbying the EU to let them sell cheaper cars again, citing the fact that the average age of cars in Europe is getting older and older, and arguing that the bloc's introduction of legislation that has made cars more expensive through mandating active safety kit and increasing levels of electrification is handing an advantage to Chinese car makers, which can offer those things more cheaply.

"In 2019, 49 cars sold for under €15,000 in Europe," Stellantis chairman John Elkann told the Automotive News Europe congress in June. "Now, it's just one." (His firm's own Fiat Panda.)

Faced with more expensive cars, Europeans have had three choices: buy the cheaper ones, which tend to be Chinese; borrow more money for locally made ones, which was more palatable when borrowing money was easy; or keep what they've got. More of us have been keeping what we've got, but none of those three choices does European car makers a favour now that credit is no longer cheap.