Renault, 1992–2007: Globalisation and Strategic Uncertainties

After a period when everything seemed to come up trumps, Renault has fallen on hard times again. Since the 1980s, the company has run into serious difficulties once every decade: 1983–6, 1992–7 and 2005 to the present. Hard times have sometimes been followed by a spectacular recovery, as when Renault first set up its alliance with Nissan, or made Dacia into the world’s first truly ‘low-cost’ automobile maker, or penetrated the Korean market by taking over Samsung. Of course, there were dissimilarities between these three times of trouble. The first was caused by a crisis endangering Renault’s very financial survival. The second resulted from a performance crisis masking the decision it had made to pursue highly profitable product policies in the favourable context of the late 1990s. The gains from this move allowed Renault to ‘globalise’ in one fell swoop. Lastly, the problems encountered since 2005 seem to be rooted in a crisis of coherency that, although it may not yet be apprehended in this light, could ultimately turn into something more serious than mere ‘turbulence’.