Alfa Romeo, Fiat, and Jeep are Now Skipping the Paris Auto Show Too

TopSpeed

By Kirby Garlitos

Published May 31, 2018

FCA's biggest brands won't be eating baguettes in the City of Light

The auto show exodus isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Now, three of FCA's biggest brands have announced their intentions of skipping the 2018 Paris Motor Show. Fiat, Jeep, and Alfa Romeo won’t be in attendance in Paris this coming September, joining a long list of companies that include Lamborghini, BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz that won’t be around when the Paris Motor Show opens its doors.

More and more companies have made their intentions known that they won’t be a part of the Paris Motor Show. This follows a growing trend in the industry that has seen automakers make a significant shift from attending traditional auto shows to simply holding their own private debuts or going the way of online unveilings. In that sense, the decision of Jeep, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat to skip the Paris Motor Show isn’t new.

But it’s still big news because these three brands make up the core of FCA’s automaker lineup. Jeep, in particular, has posted record-setting sales figures in Europe in the last two years. The American automaker sold 103,897 units in 2016, the first time it reached six-figure sales numbers in a calendar year. That record was immediately broken a year later when Jeep sold 107,569 units in 2017, and its current 2018 sales numbers are trending to another record-breaking sales year. Its absence in one of the biggest auto shows in Europe is significant, but it also paints a clear picture of where a lot of automakers stand on auto shows these days.

The rise of social media and the opportunities and fewer costs provided by online platforms and private unveilings have shifted the narrative on auto show attendances, and we’re seeing it manifest itself as more and more companies decide to spend their marketing money on cheaper alternatives that yield similar to better exposure.

So, if you’re thinking of going to this year’s Paris Motor Show, prepare yourselves for what’s shaping up to be a decidedly less crowded event. In addition to the FCA brands and the aforementioned companies that are already skipping the show, the likes of Ford, Infiniti, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Opel, Subaru, and Volvo will also be no-shows in Paris. Fortunately, there will still be a healthy lineup of automakers that will be in Paris. This list includes Ferrari, Citroen, Jaguar, Hyundai, Kia, Land Rover, Peugeot, Smart, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz.

It’s not all of them, but it’s still a good chunk of some of the finest automakers in the world. Let’s take what we can get.

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