The European car industry has remained serene while coping with stagnating sales, and cleverly held on to respectable profits while undergoing serious restructuring. Even the threat of a credit crunch, and the real pain caused by the loss of lucrative sales in the U.S. by its German premium brands has been managed with a degree of aplomb.
But rocketing oil prices look like the last straw, potentially plunging the industry into a savage downturn not seen for perhaps 30 or 40 years.
"The West European car market is going to see an old fashioned downturn of the kind we have seen in mature markets previously in the 1960s and 1970s and that involves a 15 to 20 percent decline in demand, and distress for the car manufacturers," said Karel Williams, professor of accounting and political economy at Manchester University.
Even leading manufacturers, who can often be relied on to claim that everything in the garden is rosy while the rest of us can see that the rot has set in, are voicing apprehension.