“You should ask the competitors who said they were going to replicate the Dacia business model why they could not do it. What I can say is that Dacia is not just a car range. It’s a whole system, implemented with integrity in order to get the results in product, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing and sales. This may be something that is difficult to reproduce. I’m very happy that no one has been able to reproduce it yet,” Ghosn explained in an interview for Automotive News.

Ghosn stated that “profitability in the auto industry is where people cannot copy you,” pointing out that Dacia is generating double-digit operating margin.

The Renault-Nissan CEO pointed out that he is confident that the alliance will surpass General Motors sales-wise and will become the world’s third-largest auto manufacturer by 2018, despite the difficulties currently registered on markets such as Russia, Brazil and India.

The Renault-Nissan alliance aims to expand on the Chinese market, where it seeks to boost its sales from the current 30,000 units to 600,000 units and to have a market share of 3 per cent. Likewise, Ghosn pointed out that Renault will expand the range of models offered.

Renault Group’s Dacia registered a 19 per cent growth in sales last year, to 511,000 auto vehicles. Approximately three quarters of the cars sold were delivered in Europe, the Romanian brand’s market share rising by 0.4 percentage points year-on-year to 2.5 per cent.

Dacia’s biggest markets in Europe last year were France (106,000 units), Germany (a little over 50,000 units) and Spain (approximately 46,000 units). (source: nineoclock.ro)