Fiat CEO accuses VW of waging price war

MILAN (Reuters): Italian car maker Fiat’s chief executive Sergio Marchionne accused German rival Volkswagen of being too aggressive in its pricing strategy, when conditions are already tough in the European auto industry.

“It’s a bloodbath of pricing and it’s a bloodbath on margins,” he was quoted as saying by the International Herald Tribune.

Marchionne, who is also head of US automaker Chrysler, called for the European Commission to step in and help the sector face its huge overcapacity problems, the paper said.

“What they should do is coordinate a rationalisation of the industry across the producing companies,” he said. “The ones that really have not acted on this are the French and the Germans, who have not taken out any capacity at all.”

Results from European mass-market car makers this week are set to mirror the region’s debt crisis as Germany’s Volkswagen weathers the deepening slump while peers PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault and Fiat struggle with plunging Mediterranean sales.