This page collects news about the French car industry: model launches, plants and ownership. France built its business on small cars and has not moved off it. The Clio, 208 and C3 are perennial fixtures near the top of European sales charts, and the electric versions of that class, the R5, e-C3 and e-208, were the first serious push to make affordable EVs in Europe rather than import them. France is also the second-largest car market in the EU after Germany. What it does less of is assembly: a lot of the volume shifted to Spain, Slovakia, Morocco and Turkey, and Dacia’s low-cost range is built in Romania and Morocco rather than at home.
Two groups cover almost all of it, and the French state is a shareholder in both: about 15% of Renault Group, its largest single stake, and about 6% of Stellantis through the public investment bank Bpifrance. Renault Group is Renault, Dacia and Alpine, and it sits inside the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, a cross-shareholding arrangement rather than a merger. Stellantis carries Peugeot, Citroën and the premium DS among its Italian, German, British and American badges, and is registered in the Netherlands. Bugatti builds at Molsheim in Alsace but has belonged to Bugatti Rimac, led from Croatia, since 2021. Full tree in Europe’s car brands.
