FORD MOTOR COMPANY LONDON (Reuters) - Renault (>> RENAULT) expects it will sell over 100,000 cars and vans in Britain in 2014, around 40 percent higher than last year, the UK Managing Director of the French car maker Ken Ramirez told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
The partly state-owned automaker, which also sells cheaper car models under its Romanian brand Dacia, said it was currently the fastest growing car and van brand in Britain, selling over 54,000 vehicles so far this year.
"This year we are on track to do roughly 40 percent growth," said Ramirez, who has led Renault UK since February 2013.
"We will be at four times the growth of the market."
But he said the first part of 2013, with which the figures are compared, represented a low point for the firm and included data from before the introduction of new models including the small Clio model and some no-frills Dacias.
Overall in Britain, the industry is expecting total van and car sales to exceed 2.7 million this year, returning to levels seen before the 2008-09 financial crisis.
If the estimates bear out, that would give Renault Group just under 4 percent of the overall UK market with the automaker aiming for over 5 percent by 2017.
Renault has seen its share of the British car market plummet over the last decade from 7.4 percent in 2004 to just above 2 percent in 2013, as the brand was increasingly seen by some customers as failing to rival other similarly-priced makes.
But Ramirez said he did not aim to reclaim all lost ground.
"The Renault Group operation in the UK had not been profitable since 2007 so in those time frames where you have high volumes in the market, we were not profitable."
"What's important, is to do sustainable, profitable growth... The objective isn't to look in the rear-view mirror and say get back to that point."
Ramirez said that by 2017, Renault was aiming for roughly 4 percent of the car market for Renault and around 1 percent for low-cost Dacia, which boasts the cheapest new car in Britain, the five-door Sandero at 5,995 pounds ($10,300).
The Ford Fiesta supermini (>> Ford Motor Company) and Corsa rank as Britons' favourite buys so far in 2014 with no Renaults in the top ten.
Renault published its first-half vehicles sales earlier this month showing an increase in volumes as a rebound in Europe helped to offset an emerging market slump.
Ramirez told Reuters the firm, which imports all of the over 32,000 Renault models and 13,000-odd Dacias it has sold in Britain so far this year, had no plans to begin manufacturing domestically but did not rule out the possibility in the future.
"One of the more important factors for us to consider manufacturing in the UK is the fact that we are fully an importer, and that means we are at the risk of forex," he said.
"So if you were able to say that part of your volume was partially, because it's never going to be completely, immune to forex then you have at least some way to hedge against it."
Sterling is at its strongest against the euro for nearly two years, generally benefiting importers and harming exporters.
Even minor fluctuations can be significant to carmakers with Ford in Britain benefiting by 30 million pounds every euro cent sterling moves away from parity with the euro.
(Reporting By Costas Pitas; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
By Costas Pitas
