Can Peugeot supremo Tavares make it a turnaround hat-trick as he eyes Jaguar?
UNLIKE the car industry’s other Carlos – Ghosn, that is, not that many people have heard of Carlos Tavares even though he runs Europe’s largest carmaker, PSA – which owns marques including Peugeot, Vauxhall/opel and Citroen.
PSA is reportedly looking to swoop on Jaguar Land Rover and it should come as no surprise that Tavares is eyeing up potential suitors. He has said numerous times in the past year that he’s open to partnerships.
Tavares has repeatedly warned that the challenges facing the car industry would result in a chaotic survival of the fittest battle, leading to a heightened period of mergers and deals.
“There’s going to be chaos between now and 2030,” he told Autocar.co.uk just last month. “Not all manufacturers will survive the Darwinism, not all will master the electric vehicle track. It’s extremely exciting because the competition is going to be extremely selective. That will create opportunities for deals.”
The 61-year-old Portuguese national started his career with Renault as an engineer test-driver straight out of the École Centrale Paris, one of France’s most prestigious universities. He rose quickly up the ranks to eventually become chief operating officer in 2011 under Carlos Ghosn.
Tavares was instrumental in turning around Renault’s Japanese partner, Nissan, and is well-known for his obsessive focus on productivity, cost-cutting and efficiency savings.
An amateur racer and car enthusiast, he regularly takes part in rallies and admits to being extremely competitive. The father-of-three also spends much of his spare time tinkering away in his shed, restoring cars.
This drive and ambition and attention to detail explains why he made headlines in 2013 by telling a journalist he wanted to become chief executive of a carmaker, but that his friend and mentor at Renault, Carlos Ghosn, was not stepping down anytime soon. A fortnight later, Tavares left the company and joined PSA.
At the time, PSA was on the verge of bankruptcy, having lost billions of euros over the previous few years. Tavares set about transforming the company, cutting jobs and streamlining operations – but not shutting factories. He turned PSA into one of the world’s most successful and profitable carmakers.
Tavares took yet another gamble in 2017 when he bought loss-making Vauxhall/opel from GM for £1.9bn. The idea was to return it to profit by cutting costs and creating economics of scale. The acquisition was met with scepticism, but Tavares pulled it off. Opel/vauxhall turned a profit in the first half of last year and boosted PSA’S group sales by 40pc.
The question now is whether Tavares can score a hat-trick? He certainly appears charged up for the next challenge, if his comments at last year’s Paris motor show last year are anything to go by.
He said PSA doesn’t “fear anything”, adding: “Either you adapt yourself or you disappear. We have the mental force to transform ourselves. We are psychopaths of performance. Never relax our efforts to protect ourselves from the trouble that awaits the weakest. It’s the exigency that leads to performance and that protects.”
‘Either you adapt yourself or you disappear. We are psychopaths of performance’