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Increasingly, companies are developing foreign markets—and escaping high tariffs—by exporting parts, rather than whole cars, for assembly abroad. Britain's Rootes is building an assembly plant in Iran that will produce 5,000 vehicles a year, mostly Hillmans and Singers; British Motors Corp. is readying a plant in Spain with a capacity of 1,000 Mini cars a week. France's Citroën produced 26,000 cars in Spain last year, will double its output by 1967. The most aggressive exporter to underdeveloped markets, especially behind the Iron Curtain, is Italy's Fiat. It already collects lucrative fees by licensing Yugoslavia to produce 40,000 Fiats a year, maintains a sales and service network in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, and recently agreed to supply the Soviet Union with technical know-how and parts. Fiat has similar agreements with Egypt, India, Spain, Morocco, Iran, South Africa and Argentina.
Room for Everyone. As competition among European companies has increased, so, paradoxically, has cooperation and consolidation. Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz work together on domestic sales and production problems, are extending cooperation abroad in more than 100 countries. France's Citroën, which absorbed Panhard earlier this year, cooperates with Peugeot in purchasing and production; the two companies are expected to merge completely in two or three years. There is more than enough room in the European market for everyone to grow. In Sweden, Europe's most motorized country, there is one car for every four citizens, in Holland and Italy one for every ten. In the U.S., by contrast, there is one car for every three people.