(Adds detail on trucks consolidation, background, shares)
By Jan Schwartz
HAMBURG, Aug 15 (Reuters) - The head of Europe's biggest carmaker, Volkswagen AG , said on Friday he did not expect a pick-up in the German auto market until spring next year, later than many industry experts had been expecting.
"The real upturn in the market may only come in February or March," VW Chief Executive Bernd Pischetsrieder told Reuters in an interview on a flight to Stockholm, where he was due to take part in a supervisory board meeting at truckmaker Scania.
Most experts have been predicting an upturn in the second half of this year.
He said VW, which will unveil a new version of its best-selling Golf hatchback later this month, was still on track to sell over five million cars this year, though pre-tax profit would drop below last year's 4.76 billion euros, as expected.
Pischetsrieder repeated his pledge that VW's fortunes would be reversed next year once the new Golf model is on the market. VW has produced over 22 million Golfs since launching the first generation in 1974, making it the second most popular car in the world after Toyota's Corolla.
VW stock -- which is trading at around 10 times forecast 2003 earnings, a hefty premium to peers like PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Renault -- was up three percent, outperforming the European sector in late trade.
Pischetsrieder expected the German car market, which is Europe's biggest, to see between 3.35 million and 3.4 million new car registrations in 2004, slightly above the 3.25 million forecast by the country's VDA auto industry association for this year.
He said he expected the European market as a whole to grow by just a few percent next year, with the French and Italian markets stagnating while the German market grows.
THREE-WAY TRUCKS DEAL
VW is in a pivotal position in respect of expected consolidation in the trucks sector as it currently offers only small and medium-sized commercial vehicles in Europe and has said it wants to offer its fleet customers a full range, including larger trucks.
Pischetsrieder said a co-operation between VW, Scania and Germany's MAN would make sense and said VW would not sell its 34-percent voting stake in Scania.
He declined to say exactly how co-operation would work, but said that VW saw itself playing a role as a "moderator" or an "integrator" in any deal.
"We can already do that with our voting stake," he said.
Industry and banking sources have said VW was considering buying MAN's trucks business, which is Europe's third biggest, but Pischetsrieder said VW had not discussed teaming up with a financial investor to take over either MAN or Scania.
"I have never held any talks with any financial investor about taking over Scania or MAN, and nor has anyone from VW," he said.
MAN Chief Executive Rudolf Rupprecht said on Wednesday he also saw co-operation with VW and Scania as desirable, but said the parties would not necessarily need to buy stakes in each other if the same benefits could be achieved without doing so.
Scania and MAN, both relatively small players in the high-cost heavy trucks market, already struck a deal in April jointly to make gearboxes and axles in a bid to cut development costs in a saturated market.