Europe's recovery is not dramatic but is sustainable, Mr. Marchionne said, largely because “we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
“We are seeing the beginning of a recovery. I think it's permanent. I don't think it's phenomenal,” he said.
Snapping up BMWs
The European recovery excludes Russia, where Western sanctions over the hostilities in Ukraine have helped spur inflation and a sharp decline in car sales. Several auto makers bet heavily on the potential of Russia, one of the BRIC markets (along with Brazil, India and China) expected to produce gushers of sales growth someday.
The hard part is waiting for “someday.”
Auto makers may not be happy about it, but they know that developing markets are a classic high-risk, high-reward investment. Right now they're feeling the pain. For instance, Barb Samardzich, Ford of Europe COO, said the company has scaled back manufacturing plans in Russia.
“We've taken off shifts in our St. Petersburg plant,” Ms. Samardzich said. “We have not added the shifts and manpower that we originally planned when we thought the market was going to be a growing market instead of a shrinking market.”
Even though the immediate future of Russia is shaky, auto makers continue to believe in the country's potential. The same is true for Brazil, where Reuters last week reported that the national auto dealer association forecast a 10-percent sales decline this year, hitting the lowest level since 2009.
Ian Robertson, BMW board member for sales and marketing, endorsed the markets and, by extension, the necessity to keep betting on the BRICs.
“Overall, Brazil and Russia are big car markets for the future, definitely,” Mr. Robertson said. “What we expect in all of these emerging markets is a lot of volatility. What we see in the more mature markets by and large is the gap between good and not so good is plus/minus 5 percent. But you can see a lot of volatility in these other countries.”
In the last few months, however, BMW's sales have increased in Russia. Mr. Robertson said that's not good. Quite the opposite of good, in fact.
“That's a distortion effect, because you have a weak ruble, and they want to convert it into hard assets,” he said. In other words, nothing says “hard assets” like a 7 series.
Dizzying product mix
Outside of the interview rooms where executives assessed roiling international markets, product developers seemed happy to surf the waves of change. “Yeah, let's blow up some paradigms!” seemed to be the mood.
So you had an Aston Martin crossover concept, a BMW front-wheel-drive minivan, a Mercedes-Maybach chauffeur-driven car that seemed approximately as long as a school bus and a concept from India's Tata reveling in futuristic interior ideas.
But the car that epitomized the mood of Geneva 2015 was the Lexus LF-SA (no, that's not some naughty texting abbreviation — LOL). Extreme doesn't quite convey the visual impact of the LF-SA, which was bursting with visual ideas, so much so that people seemed to walk up and just stare for several minutes.
Exterior designer Jaromir Cech has juiced up the brand's signature “spindle grille,” for instance, with a pattern of sharp-edged diamonds converging on the Lexus logo. The doors include a dramatic upward line moving to the rear, where the roof converges with a sharp winged surface that segues into zigzag taillights.
Add to that powdered-carbon and resin wheel-well cladding and laser-engraved tires and — whew! It takes a moment to absorb everything going on. Mr. Cech notes that the LF-SA is “purely a design study” in Lexus' quest to overtake German luxury brands.
Meanwhile, interior designer Laurent Bouzige said his team sought to create a refuge, a place of pleasure amid the ever-intruding demands of digitally connected life. A couple of touches: Aside from eight speakers, the driver's seat has "a noise-cancellation system in the headrest to allow the music to stand out," Mr. Bouzige says, and the armrests are stacks of soft, 3-D printed sheets.
Strikingly, Lexus is looking to leapfrog the connected car to a time when connectivity is taken for granted.
"It's targeting 2020, 2025," Mr. Bouzige said, "and in that time, all the smartphone communications, G6 communications, the teleconferencing and such will be at such a high level, because of the capacity of streaming the data, that the car will not be a tool of commuting but become more specified as a tool of pleasure."
Speaking of info tech, auto executives are aware that $178 billion — the estimated cash hoard of Apple Inc. — is lurking outside their door. Apple's mysterious automotive project definitely has the industry's attention, although automakers' wariness is mingled with curiosity about what Apple might come up with.
The industry is already experimenting intensely with vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, vehicle-to-outer-world connectivity and mobility services — all in search of what consumers would be willing to pay for. Apple's interest intrigues auto executives in part because of the company's skill in finding solutions to such challenges.
As Ford of Europe chief Jim Farley put it, “We welcome the innovation in our industry.”
Mr. Marchionne, likewise, said that a “disruptive interloper” like Apple would be healthy.
But he added that “when you are one of the guys whose life is being disrupted, then you are not necessarily looking forward to the event.”
The buzzing hive
Not that Apple's interest is the only complication out there. Fluctuating currencies, ever-stricter emissions and fuel economy regulations, labor negotiations, shareholder pressures — you name it, executives are dealing with it, or at least trying to devise a way to do so.
But far from being disenchanted, most executives at Geneva seemed to relish the turbulence. The surge of energy from a recovering economy has spurred the enthusiasm of an industry of car-lovers.
It's visible. The Palexpo exhibition center here is built on two levels, each packed to the edges with exhibitors, and if you stand at the lip of the upper level, you look down on a buzzing hive of activity —bespoke luxury car-constructors targeting the ultrarich, mammoth multinationals trying to dominate every segment in every nation in the world.
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Dave Guilford at is a reporter with Automotive News, a sister publication of Tire Business.
